Contraventions
by LedaTreize
Summary: In a different past, there was no Zak to bring Apollo and Starbuck together, so when pure chance effects their meeting, what kind of future do they make? And what rules get broken?
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Contraventions  
**Characters**: Kara/Lee  
**Spoilers**: Some for mini, s1 so far. .  
**Rating**: Adult: sex (not graphic) and language unsuitable for kids.  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, RDM's and Sci-Fi. But used lovingly, with respect and with no intent to profit.

**A/N**: This story is AU; there is no Zak. The first six chapters have been published on LJ, but ch7 and those that will follow it are new.

-->>+ --

**1-**

"You're not supposed to be here."

Starbuck didn't look up from her desk, hoping that if she looked focused enough on her flight review paperwork, her CO would just give up and go away. "Sir?"

"Cut the crap, Kara. You're on leave, remember? The leave you haven't taken in three years? The leave that's etched in titanium in the Fleet Code? The leave that will hopefully make you stop scaring the crap out of the nuggets and everyone else around here and make room in the flight schedule for some other pilots to get air time?"

"Frak it, Deak. I don't want leave, I don't need leave. Consider it taken. And if all the little flyboys and girls aren't scared of me, then I'm not doing my job."

Colonel Deacon Metsfield, Commanding Officer, Sparta Fleet Academy of Picon, ran fingers through his thinning hair and exhaled noisily. "I can't consider it taken, not this time. Not again. This isn't just about me being your boss, Starbuck. It's about the review board wanting to know why your name is always up on the flight roster, even while you're supposedly off base. And the medical supervisor wanting to know when you're going to report for your annual from last year, let alone this year. And most of all, it's about me watching you pushing things too far, again, and wondering if this is the year you break."

She put her pen down, tried not to snarl her response. "Sorry to be such an inconvenience, Colonel."

"Don't be a bitch. You need to get out, Kara. You need to shake your head loose from these idiot kids and brass-plated orders and remember how to be yourself. Take time off. Please."

"Gods, Deak... this is me you're talking to: Starbuck, remember? The one who routinely ignores regs and ranks and does whatever the hell she wants? I get plenty of fun..." It was true, as far as that went; there was never an order given her that was followed without condsideration of the alternative, even if there was no reason to balk other than simply to rattle whoever had given it. She went out in her off-duty hours, entertained herself and her fellow pilot-instructors, occasionally got drunk or laid or involved in a brawl to burn off some energy. How could anyone even contemplate the idea that she needed a break from her job? from the base? "It's not like I have anything else to do," she added, a sly grin slanting at her boss.

"And that's my point. I get that you love your job; I do. You're career Fleet, it's written all over you. I think you need the rules and regs, as much to buck against as follow, but it isn't all there is to life. You know that. Three years is long enough to spend ignoring it."

"My last shot at the civillian trimmings didn't work so well that I'm keen to try again," Kara muttered.

"Nobody says you have to buy real estate and build a picket fence," Deak told her. "Just... get off base. Stay away from the usual bars, from the same old crew. Remember what the whole point of having a Fleet is for: to protect the good things in life, the things we tend to give up while in service. Sleeping in, food that isn't on a chow line, lack of schedules and stupid formalities and people knocking on your door fourteen hours a day."

The way he described it, real life sounded almost inviting. "Medical really on your back about me?"

"Frak, yes. Terwillger even pulled me aside at the pyramid game last night to tell me you missed your appointment again. And while I know you thrive on confrontation, Starbuck, I don't. I told him you were on leave - like you are supposed to be - so please. Back me up. Don't make me make it an order."

Kara sighed, closed the file full of reviews and shoved it in a drawer. "What's the minimum time I can take?"

"Two weeks. I'd say three but I don't think you'd make it that long."

Fourteen days. Frak, she'd be climbing the walls after four. "One."

"Don't try it. You're officially relieved of duty for the next fourteen days, Kara, and if I see you set foot on this base for anything short of a new Cylon war until fifteen days from now, I'll officially haul your ass up to Terwillger myself." Deak wasn't kidding.

"Can't I stay in quarters?"

"No. I won't expect you to get off Picon or even out of Sparta City, but you are going to be off Fleet territory. Get a hotel. Leave allowance covers accomodation expenses, and you have enough accrued to stay at the godsdamned Constellation if you want." Her C.O. leaned over, ruffled a hand through her short hair and grinned. "I've got tickets to a Panthers game on the sixth. You can use one, call me if you're free. Now scat."

"Yes, sir."

He mock-cuffed her and let himself out of her office, calling back over his shoulder when she didn't get up from the desk. "You have an hour before I send Wilkins to escort you off base, Kara."

_Frak_. It would take her an hour to find her civvy clothes, let alone pack them. "Frakking regulations" she muttered at his back, and went to get started.

---

Lee Adama tugged the thick leather of his coat more snugly around his frame, ducked his chin towards his chest: he'd forgotten how chilly the springs of Picon could be. No, he amended, flicking a glance at the lowering sky, not forgotten. Willfully disregarded. Blocked out, perhaps. He hadn't enjoyed his three years of cadetship so greatly that anything about Sparta formed part of happy recollections, but the chill - unseasonal by Caprican standards - of late Gaia held some particularly unpleasant associations. Some of them guided his steps now, turning him resolutely away from the district patronised by the general run of Colonial cadets, carrying him further down the rain-shimmered esplanade towards the commerical center. Chill air whispered around his ears, so he hunched further into the collar of his jacket and wished he were anywhere else. _Anywhere_, he thought bitterly, _including Hades, so long as it's warmer and nobody calls me 'Apollo'._

The thought sliced through him again: if only it were as easy to ditch his surname as it might be to abandon his callsign. And everything that came with either appellation. No such luck. The Adama name carried weights he had no hope of shedding, and even his callsign was half in reference to his descent, a sad, sarcastic joke at first that became an entirely new insult later on. "Frak that," he hissed into the wind. "I'm on leave for two weeks. And I'm not going anywhere near the base. This is the last respite I'll have for a year from all of that... and I'm going to need every second of it."

Nobody was on the street to hear his muttered invective; most people in the coastal city, long inured to this kind of weather in the month of Gaia, were well indoors, more genially occupied. But those who noted him through their car windows or from the glazed facades of their office buildings knew what he was, if not whom. Stride military-brisk, his long coat doing nothing to counteract the fact that he carried a Fleet duffel slung over a shoulder, his confident and graceful steps the heavier type, like those of someone accustomed to the adjusted gravity of an abode in space. The doorman of the hotel he selected at random from among those on the shore was a former marine, and with the instinct of a man who'd spent his life in the military, knew an officer when he saw one.

Lee almost winced when the man tossed him a casual salute, tried to keep his face expressionless when he returned a reluctant nod. The desk clerk, a prettyish woman with a no-nonsense smile, lifted an eyebrow at his driver's license. "You may not be aware, Mister... Adama, but we have special rates for those with Fleet I.D..."

That was the difficulty with taking every scrap of leave one could lay their hands on; officially he was not due for leave for another three months, but he doubted he'd make it through to that point with his sanity intact. So, with the help of _Orion_'s CMO, the leave had been granted, but he didn't have the same benefits as someone who waited in line. Most of these two weeks would be coming out of his own pocket; he'd only come to Picon - and Sparta in particular - because it was close, relatively economical, and quiet this time of year. It still cost more than he liked, but as far as Lee Adama was concerned, it was a question of survival. He had to get away! Still, it would be stupid beyond principle to ignore the fact that he could get his room cheaper by admitting he was Fleet. Hopefully it was the last such admission he'd ever have to make.

Ten minutes later, after half the reception staff had been made aware that their newest guest was a viper pilot and a captain and Lee's remaining reserve of patience was nearly exhausted, he finally stepped into the elevator and let it carry him up. With the peculiar awareness of someone who lived shipboard, he could feel the flex and roil of the sea breeze buffetting the building; every minute movement of the structure, he felt. After the absolute stillness and void of space and the relatively cramped conditions of his _Orion _posting, the small apartment seemed luxurious, even lavish, and the slight shift beneath his feet reminded him constantly that he was not on a battlestar.

If only the well-meaning concierge and her cronies would let him forget; if only his luck held, and his family, such as it was, didn't come looking for him.

He emptied his duffel on the bed and stowed the clothing haphazardly in the wardrobe, leaving out a pair of black jeans and a burgundy shirt. It was not by accident that he possessed nothing gray or navy that wasn't part of his uniform; neither was it chance that he had none of those articles with him. Along with the rest of his kit, they were back in the quarters assigned him on the _Orion_; he'd left them there, travelled down in civilian gear on the first available shuttle, and made to disappear. Apart from his ID, there was only one other item that proclaimed his military status: his tags, which, legally, he wasn't permitted to remove without orders.

Like he cared. He tugged the chain off over his head, tossed it on the night table, and disappeared into the unaccustomed luxury of a private bathroom for a long shower. His last two weeks of leave. Then one more year, one more year of required service, and he could forget he was ever captain of anything. He'd get a job with Aerospace on Caprica or Leonis, save his credits, buy a little bar-bistro where the only orders ever heard were demands for another round, or a plate of the evening's special. One more year. He planned to store up as much reality as possible in the next two weeks, to get him through that year. Starting that night.

With any luck, he'd time his emergence with the end of the working day, lose himself in the civilian crowds which would throng the waterfront entertainment district. Like any number of them, he planned to spend this week's end night cozied up to a bar, and maybe later to a blonde; preferably one sassy and rebellious, someone who didn't belong in a uniform and couldn't give a frak about rules and regulations.

-->>+ --


	2. Chapter 2

-->>+ --

**2.**

She didn't seriously consider the Constellation for more than five seconds. No matter how much accomodation credit she had accrued, the luxury hotel wouldn't have had room for her. Even if they'd had an entire wing vacant, that velvet-lined establishment would have been hesitant, Kara'd imagined, to welcome someone who would likely walk in dressed in liberated camouflage gear, smoking a cigar, and who steadfastly refused to hand her duffel to a bellhop or allow doors to be opened for her. Or tip.

Starbuck allowed herself some wry amusement at the thought, and summoned the bartender for a second beer. _Picture that, Mom. Picture your hardass daughter, still in combat boots because you always said it was a waste to buy her pretty things, being escorted up to the Parnassus Suite, with a bottle of '63 chilling and a welcome basket waiting in the kitchenette. Picture her calling for burgers and a six-pack on the room-service phone. Picture her later leading some nameless boy-frak back through the big front doors, and the poor fool sneaking out in the morning_. The beer burbled in her throat as she envisioned it all.

_Yeah.I'd laugh too, Mom._

The beer was cold as the weather, but a damn sight more pleasant - and she'd avoided being out in the latter by ducking into a municipal kiosk (godsdamned tourism bureau had these things everywhere) to find out where civilians stayed when they came to Sparta. She'dhave been nonplussed if she'd had to ask someone to recommend digs, but it wasn't like this was something she'd had to do before; she'd lived on one college campus or military base or other since the day she turned sixteen. What did she know about hotels?

The list of options was surprisingly long, but Kara eventually chose the Fortuna, for various reasons, and when she'd scored a welcome basket anyway because she smiled at the doorman and flashed her Fleet ID, she wasn't disappointed. The room was better than she'd expected, plenty of space, welcoming and servicable without being cheap. And the service had the right mix of humor and helpfulness, and a remarkable lack of obsequouy. The bath, roughly half the size of her office, was the clincher, though. She stayed in it half the afternoon, and was agreeably surprised that she wasn't now standing here at the bar with pruney fingers and toes.

She almost hadn't picked the Fortuna, because of how far it was from home. On the beachfront halfway between Sparta Base and the civillian spaceport, the only traffic she could hear came from groundcars and city transport flights; she couldn't see a freighter - or hear one - from her balcony, let alone a Viper patrol, and the thought of being so far away from flying had set her teeth on edge. That was, it bothered her right up until she remembered she wouldn't be flying for the next two weeks anyway, and then Kara realised that maybe a little distance would be a good thing. On the plus side, the Fortuna was half a block from Sparta's single casino, and had possibly the best hotel bar on Picon, if the publicity blurb was to be believed. So far, she believed it. Their beer was good.

The thirdbrew she took slower, enjoying the idea that maybe she could drink in a more leisurely fashion. She had all night. She didn't have early patrol, or an oh-nine-hundred class or sim session. She didn't even have to get to the mess before breakfast was over or cook for herself: breakfast at the Fortuna was served whenever you rang for it. It was a nice idea. It partially made up for the ache of not flying... partially. The only real problem was drinking slower left her more time to think.

Midway through the fourth beer, she found companionship: a group of guys, evidently construction workers from Mykenoi, who obviously found her interesting. They bought her beer, and weren't pushy. In fact, they were too nice, their education obviously lacking. One called her _ma'am_. Another tried to teach her to play pool. "Gonna advise me not to drink too much, too?" she asked, grinning, but they didn't get it. Kara shrugged off the desire to enlighten them and stole another look at the man by the bar.

It wasn't a hardship. Not tall, not brawny, but built. Dark hair clipped close, professional-neat, but not the military buzz she saw more often than not in this town. Chiselled features set off by the bar lighting, which also darkened his eyes to indiscriminate shadows at the distance, and a casual, attractive posture which nevertheless made her think that his evident relaxed poise was a hair trigger for something more confrontational.

That was more interesting than anything else.

What was it about rivalry that got her so worked up? Not in the cockpit - she'd never had someone push her hard enough in a Viper to make her feel challenged, at least, not since her own Basic Flight days - but on the deck, or on the court, or in the bed... she was a sucker for a worthy opponent. Not that she found many.

When the guy by the bar finally stopped watching and made a move, Kara wondered if she'd misread his interest. He didn't flirt, or make suggestive remarks, or try and brush past her space when he moved around the table to make a shot. He didn't even spend much time eying the fit of her jeans or the cut of her shirt (a donation from a former roommate, who used to despair of her taste), or even ask what her name was, let alone her call code. He just played the game, and played it damned well. And if their eyes - his were a feakishly vivid blue that had made her blink as he came close - met more frequently over the tip of the cue than was strictly necessary, well...

The game drew her in. The liquor drowned the disappointment she felt that he wasn't more obviously interested, let her relax; it was almost like hanging out at the O-club on base, where the available men knew better than to hit on her. She enjoyed his company, whoever this guy was. She enjoyed the way he didn't cut her slack. Kara also enjoyed the way his jeans fit, but seeing she knew better than to stare, that was her business, right?

--

Halfway through his fifth beer at the smoky bar-nightclub he'd found by walking in the opposite direction to Sparta Base, Lee found exactly the right girl. She had a challenging smile, he noticed, watching her over the rim of his glass. Four or five men were in attendance as she wisecracked over a pool table, but none of them were given any particular encouragement. While Lee watched, she managed to sucker not one but two of the men into playing against her; not a bad player himself, he could tell when she wasn't playing with all her abilities. She kind of gave herself away by the easy grace of her shots. The other three men begged off, and she laughed, bought the group a round. "Next time, don't assume a girl can't play".

His attention hadn't gone unnoticed, either. He'd been looking openly enough, comparing her mentally to his usual type and wondering why she held so much more appeal. He'd been amused by her hustle, impressed by how easily she deflected the more amorous of her opponents. And interested - definitely interested - by her obviously physical nature. She lifted her glass, tossed him a wink over the edge of it, and it was a definite challenge. It took him precisely three seconds to reassure himself that she didn't look in the least like a military type; decision made, Lee swallowed the rest of his beer and wandered over.

"Play you for the table?" he inquired.

"If that's all you're after," she agreed. Her fan club hooted a little, but she ignored them. "How about we goose up the action a little?"

"What'cha got in mind?" The table wasn't a bad one, even though the felts were a little worn.

"Lets start with a deck" she suggested, "and see where we go from there?"

He nodded, but narrowed his eyes at her; 'deck' was standard fleet slang for the ten credit note. Still, the Colonial Fleet didn't hold a monopoly on the word; this was a military base town, everyone could be using it. He flicked his eyes over her again to reassure himself: slim-fitting jade coloured halter-top, blue jeans, leather halfboots. No sign of dog-tags, and her posture was relaxed, slouched, almost, if slouching could describe the informal grace in her posture. "Fine. You break."

She played it close the first time, narrowly beating him - but then, he wasn't playing full out either; they didn't talk, but the implicit challenge only rose higher. He doubled the bet for their second game, and beat her. She doubled again in the third, and won. She bought a bottle of ambrosia and they shared it during the fourth and fifth, and her cheer quad vanished somewhere during the bottle he bought after that. The count stood at four games apiece, and both of them were too intent on the game - and each other - to care how much the bet was for.

She was ahead by one shot when the barkeeper summarily kicked everyone out during the ninth game. "Frak," she said, looking at the rain-slick sidewalks. "It can't be that late..."

"Early," he assured her. "Anywhere else in this place that stays open?"

"Nope," she shrugged, tossed him a rueful grin. "Lame military towns, sticks up their asses."

That was reassuring; he didn't know anything about her, but hearing her call the military establishment 'lame' suited his inclinations. "Lee Adama" he said, offered her a hand. She looked at him, fine cloud of blonde hair curling against her neck in the damp halo of the bar's doorway lighting, and pressed her fingers into his, smiling.

"Kara Thrace."

The heat between their palms shouldn't have been so magnetic; it wasn't that cold. He didn't let go, and felt his own smile waver about the same time hers did. He wasn't usually so uncertain when it came to casual sex, but then again, this wasn't the usual method; the casual frak scene had several unspoken rules, and some were being a little bent tonight. She hadn't been precisely on the prowl, and he hadn't verbally flirted, made his interest plain - hadn't exchanged more than a dozen words all night not related to their competition or their bet - and all he had to judge her response by was the way their eyes seemed to catch over the table. Finally the silence was too heavy. "I'm glad I met you, Kara. You got game."

"You do, too," she agreed. "But is the game over now?" The challenge was in her voice, but her eyes were very wide and dark, and her lips were parted. Lee drew in a breath, tugged her a little closer, and shook his head.

-->>+ --


	3. Chapter 3

-->>+ --

**3.**

They were drunk, but not so drunk that it made the surreality of the situation any less. He couldn't even figure out why it felt so strange; hardly the first time on leave he'd headed back to his hotel with a complete stranger. Maybe the alcohol was the thing; maybe this time he was too sober? At any rate, such conversation as they managed during the walk was an argument of who'd won the bet. Such pauses as there were in the chatter couldn't get too fraught: it was mostly dark and the pavements were slick and they weren't so sober that they could afford to eyefrak instead of watch where they were going.

So, in between good-natured discussion and jocular insults, there were silences that should have been uncomfortable, but weren't. Nothing about her was uncomfortable except the intensity of effect she had on his body, the way his breath caught and his blood rose whenever he glanced sideways and caught a glimpse of her in the shine of a streetlamp or the glare of headlights passing.

It made him feel dizzy, almost; to realise that he felt so affected by her, even though the whole situation was so damned normal. The hotel door swung open before them as he waved his key at the sensor, a thing as unremarkable as an alarm clock going off, but even that felt different. It was as though there was something about automatic doors and perfectly ordinary actions that became extraordinary because of the woman beside him. That slightly dreamlike quality had accompanied him all the way from the bar, and now as he waved his key again to access the elevator, another minor miracle, he tried to shake it loose, think clearly. What the frak was going on in his head?

They stood on opposite sides of the lift, looking at each other in the dimness, saying nothing, and for the first time he wondered he could follow his own plans: one gorgeous bedmate and a few nights' escape from _Apollo_ and _Adama_, and then farewell. This wasn't supposed to be special. This wasn't supposed to be dizzying, wasn't supposed to be making his throat dry or his head spin. It was supposed to be just a good frak, right? She wasn't supposed to be the kind he'd still want there when he woke up.

His mouth opened, not to change his mind, but to say something - anything - that might alter this encounter, shove it off the slippery slope of 'one-time-frak' and make it something else, when he remembered that he couldn't want anything else. Now was not the time. He had to survive one more year, and even if there could be something more to the two of them than casual sex, he wasn't sure he'd make it through that year knowing someone was waiting for him. He'd quit, he'd walk away sooner, he'd fail at his own test, because he didn't want to be there and didn't want to lose one more thing, one more person, to the Colonial Fleet.

"What?" She was looking at him, her head tilted a little to the side, eyes glinting with reflections of the panel lights.

He bit back the impulse to want to know her, confide in her. "You're gorgeous," he said, let his face slip into a hungry smile. At least this too was true.

"Lay off," she grinned, her smile turning impish. "You already convinced me."

"No line," he protested, a hand lifted towards her, as though that was all the explanation he could give. "I just... well - you are."

Her eyes flared, and he saw her shift forward, her weight on her toes, her expression both pleased and predatory. "So are you."

Just then, the lift shuddered to a stop; Lee followed her out the opening doors. There was a pause while he fumbled with damp overcoats and got the key out again and his door open, and they stood for a moment in the void, pausing before stepping over the threshold. She was looking at him, and the expression in her eyes was like an echo of his own feelings: anticipation. Confusion. Need.

Lee realised he hadn't kissed her since they left the bar, and suddenly that felt unforgivable. He closed his hands on her biceps, the keycard falling to the floor with their coats, folds of dripping fabric pooling on the stoop along with the last of his indecision: they both wanted this, and he wanted her more than he could remember wanting anyone in a long, long time. He tugged her close, dipped to kiss her, tasted ambrosia on her sudden exhalation. Her bare arms, white beside the green of her alluring little shirt, were warm in his hands and their kiss made heat blossom under her skin; heat that travelled through his fingers and pooled directly in his belly.

A few minutes of slow, incendiary kisses later, she inched back only just far enough to speak: "Think we could take this inside?"

"If I could think," he echoed, pressed his hips firmly against hers, grinned when she let out a noise that was half gasp, half laugh, "I'd probably agree that was the second best idea all night."

"Oh?" she edged away, began nudging their coats over the doorsil with her toes. "What did I come up with that's good enough to trump the idea of leaving the hallway in search of a bed?"

"Who said the best idea was yours? And anyway -" he kissed her again, slow, then bent to snatch up the keycard, and slowly straightened while trailing his lips across the narrow strip of bare skin between her jeans and shirt, "it'll be more fun to show you than explain."

---

The hotel room came alight around them as they stumbled out of the entry; the soft glow of the lamp in the corner and the subtle wall sconces making the room not bright but visible. It was just a hotel room, but somehow the light imbued it with invitation and welcome. Kara Thrace wasn't one to think in florid terms, but she drew in a breath as she saw it: dominated by the huge window that directly overlooked the sea, the room was bathed in those warm circles of illumination. The bed, half-invisible behind a low partition, looked full out into that view; it made her think of flying, the vast expanse of silver rainclouds, black sea and refracted city lights that would fill the occupant's field of vision.

Her companion stood back, looking at her; evidently he'd seen the view before, or wasn't much for landscapes. She could still feel the touch of his lips lingering over her hip, and heat shot through her. "Nice view," she commented, turning back to him where he leaned against the wall.

"Is it?" His eyes moved over her hungrily. "Want a better look?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Thought you had an idea you wanted to share with me?"

He leaned in, slid one arm around her hips and his face into her neck. "We can combine the two," he murmured against her ear, and she shivered - shuddered, almost - with the strength of her own response. "Come on."

Kara followed where he led, admiring his body, the way that he moved, the controlled strength in his gestures: Lee Adama was a prime example of something she didn't encounter all that regularly, someone who could meet her on her own terms. It had been a long time, she remembered as they circled the low wall, the side of the bed, a very long time since she'd met someone like this. Even longer since pure serendipity had led her to one: random bar, random night, random luck of a draw which, in her experience, hadn't been the most rewarding of lotteries.

Nothing about this was abnormal, but all the same, it was extraordinary; Lee seemed to know instinctively that there wasn't any need for sweet talk or dirty talk, no need to convince her or encourage her. Kara was in this room full willing, because he was the first man in - gods, was it really years? - who had treated her like neither a prize nor an object. More like a partner. Like a wing- but no. She was supposed to not be thinking about her job, and she had something else inviting to think about, very inviting - and right in front of her.

She bit her lip when Lee caught her up against him, his chest against her back, felt his lips trace the lines of her throat as he turned her to face the window. "Still like the view?"

She nodded, eyes closed, and lifted a hand to twine in his hair as she rubbed against his body. "Mmm."

"Look again."

Gods: the glass. There they were in the glass, hazy against the blackness of the rainswept sea, but easily visible in reflection. His hands were slipping up her sides, palms flat to her ribs, fingertips just slipping under the edge of her halter, then around behind her to unlace the ribbons that fastened it. Then he lifted his face from the curve of her neck, stared at her in their mirror-image as his hands drifted up and over her torso, tracing her breasts and following the straps of her shirt upwards. She felt him pause at the knot.

"Put your hands on the glass, Kara," he murmured, his voice gravelly, but his eyes were wicked, daring her on. "Shoulder high," he prompted.

She hesitated at first, then swallowed against the tide of pleasure that bolted through her, lifted one palm and then the other and placed them flat against the chilled window, the cold of the outside air warring with the heat of her skin. He bent his head to her throat again, and she felt his teeth graze sharply over her pulse point as he moved to her ear.

"Let me," he told her, tugged the lacings of her shirt undone. They both watched it fall, fluttering down in their reflection. "Let me do everything," he whispered into her neck. "Don't take your hands off the glass."

Then he bit her earlobe and Kara realized just how difficult a challenge she'd been set.

-->>+ --


	4. Chapter 4

-->>+ --

**Warning**: _this chapter contains sexual acts; not explicit or graphic but obvious. If you don't like that, or are not of legal age in your country, please skip to chapter 5._

-->>+ --

**4.**

Lee still hadn't managed to shake the strange feeling of unreality, but at the precise moment he felt her backside press up against his groin, he ceased to care. There was no remoteness in it, no sensation that he wasn't really part of whatever was happening here - quite the opposite, he was completely involved, more intent on his partner than he'd been in years - so he let it slide that nothing was going according to pattern. He didn't play bedroom games, had never needed to frak with a woman's head when her body was on offer; he always liked things to be a little frantic, a little frenetic, in keeping with the nature of the whole casual event.

And that wasn't how this was turning out. It turned out that he could kiss Kara for quite some considerable time, urgency building every moment, and still want to be kissing her. The urge to frak, to rush headlong into release, wasn't overpowering the desire to feel her tremble and make her scream.

She felt more like a lover than a throwaway. That should bother him, he knew, but instead it made him want to see even more, figure her out, divine the reason for his unreasoning attraction. He watched their reflected image in the glass, a shadowy thing of eight limbs and pale skin and her garments drifting down to the floor, and decided at least part of it was how unrestrained she was, how honestly she reacted, how thoroughly she was enjoying his slow attentions.

The first time he had to press her fingers back against the glass, he realised that another part of it was the challenge implicit in her gaze. The game obviously wasn't over yet, and she'd been winning so far. Now the scores were slightly more in his favor. "Not very patient, are you?"

"No," she admitted, and then rubbed her assagainst him again, the scrap of cloth that remained to her tugging at both of them, making Lee growl a little. "Not usually..."

"Who wants usual?" He ran a hand down her flank, following curves, dragging that last brief garment down to her knees before trailing his fingers upwards between her thighs; not too high, not yet, but tantalisingly close. Kara trembled, and her head dropped forwards as she tried to rub against him again. "Don't look away," he urged, curled his fingers around the top of her thigh and slowly eased that leg away from the other, lifting it out of the pool of her fallen clothing. He wondered if she could read his eyes in that reflection, if the glass let her know what he was thinking as he spread her out against the glass. "Don't move, Kara."

"Frak," she whispered, and Lee didn't know how was holding back, but he was. He kissed the nape of her neck, then the side of it, then tucked his face into the curve of her throat and let his hands drift up. Trailing over skin, over shadowy curls, over her flat belly; curving as they found soft flesh, he let his palms map her.

"Gods," he heard himself mutter, voice hoarse, "why haven't I found you before this?" She froze momentarily, stilled, and he reflexively pressed closer; her breasts flexed, tightened in his hands, and they both groaned. Lee closed his teeth on her shoulder before any more stupid, reckless thoughts came out of his mouth, and let one hand drop back down.

The moment he slid fingers against her, found her already slick, she cried out. Inarticulate, but so meaningful, that sound; she had told him the truth. Patience was not her game. Nor was passivity; her own fingers flexed against the glass even as he explored her - slowly, slowly: soft folds, swollen nub, inviting depths. One finger probing made her shudder, two made her curse - _oh frak oh frak oh my gods_ - and then she broke, another wordless noise as her legs buckled and she slumped against his chest.

Lee felt triumph course through him, didn't hesitate for a second; he took two steps forward until she was pinned against the window, nipples already hardened going taut at the touch of cold glass. He felt the shock rouse her and began again, circling outside, teasing and stroking, moving up abruptly to pierce her when she started to respond.

It might only be this one time, he told himself as he worked her back into frenzy. And if its only this once, he was going to make it worth every single second.

---

It was a blur of heat on heat and his hands moving and the chill of glass and the fire of his commands whispered in her ear, and Kara was sure she was insane or dead and in paradise or dreaming because nothing about this could possibly have anything to do with real. If the events were real, what could they - slow, masterly, escalating as they were - have anything to do with Kara Thrace?

She didn't know, but she wasn't going to argue. Not while he held her there, one arm around her ribs, his face against her throat, with his fingers slowly dismantling any form of concentration. She broke again, and heard herself stutter breathily: "Lee. Gods, Lee."

He stopped. Kara pressed down with her hips, back with her ass, trying to regain that maddening sensation; instead the movement made him groan, and an altogether different thrill of warmth went through her. She tensed her fingers, pushed backwards off the glass. They fell on the bed, and the look in Lee's eyes was desperate: she hadn't seen that in the reflection, hadn't been able to see more then the curve of his jaw as he murmured encouragement against her throat. The tables had definitely turned.

Swiftly, Kara straddled him and threw his arms above his head, stripped off his shirt without bothering to unbutton. He reached for her, but she caught his wrists: the slickened fingers of his right hand brushed her lip, so she opened, drew them in and tasted her own pleasure on his skin.

It was his turn to curse; he did so, a low monologue of deities and crudities as she suckled his fingers while her own worked swiftly on his belt and jeans. He pressed the digits deeper, and she let her teeth graze them, her tongue brush them, watched his eyes roll shut. When she released his hand and bent to strip him he helped her. He was clumsy with desperation, grabbed her roughly by the shoulders to drag her down to the bed, his mouth closing urgently over hers.

Kara let him roll above her, let him press her downwards into the mattress: her hands were free. He could outweigh her, but as long as she could touch him, she wasn't helpless. Drifting a hand down his ribs and then lower, she stopped him completely when she closed her palm around his cock. He shuddered, his whole body moving with a sudden tremor that seemed to slide down his spine. "Don't" he tried, breathless, but she ignored it, teased his mouth with her tongue while she stroked him, hard and measured. "Don't, don't..."

"Don't?" Kara asked when the words dried up, slowed her movements.

"Don't _stop_!"

So she didn't. Not until he was thrusting against her hand, too intent even to kiss her. Then she ceased, her fingers loosening, trailing away over his length as he made a noise of protest.

"You -" he tried, then shook his head and nudged a knee between her thighs. "You are -"

"You already convinced me," she reminded him, tilted her hips up and felt them come together with a shock of sensation so instense she wondered if her heart would stop.

"Kara," he said then, and thrust, and they were gone. Both gone, both become someone else entirely.

-->>+ --


	5. Chapter 5

**-->>+ --**

**5.**

Lee didn't dare sleep, even though his limbs were leaden and his eyes heavy; didn't dare doze in case she slipped away. The rules of the game were a curse now; he wasn't supposed to want more - doubted he could move even if the bed was on fire, which had seemed all too possible while they writhed on it - and wasn't supposed to be pleased that she had stayed, but he did and he was. And if he slept, wrapped around her and in her and skin traced with her scent, he feared that she might not feel the same.

After all, casual fraks didn't stay the night, did they? Not unless they drifted out at dawn while their sleeping partner remained oblivious.

He couldn't say so - she was not sleeping yet - but he could think it: _don't go_. The way she looked, the hastily-dragged sheet that veiled her, the way she smiled small and secretive and satisfied... all gave him hope that she was as little eager to be gone as he was to see her going.

He was too tired to fight himself over this, too thrilled with the aftermath of something as unexpectedly unforgettable as this whole night has been, to remind himself of what he was supposed to want. It wasn't forgotten, just somehow unimportant; far more vital that she still be there when the sun appeared to turn the ocean golden and when his body regained enough energy to start again.

Lee watched her, thinking about that. He'd tasted her on her lips, the transfer of his fingers, and wanted to see if she was sweeter at the source; he'd frakked her deep and frantic and wanted to know if she would break as violently when he made it soft and painfully slow. He wanted to know how her nipples felt under his tongue.

They were visible - just - through the sheet; when she stretched, her arms limned in well-defined muscle, he gave into temptation and bent. Closing his mouth over one, he suckled against the cloth, grazing her with his teeth. Kara made a noise like a sleepy purr, her back arching slightly.

"Not satisfied?" she enquired, tilting her head at him as he disengaged; her grin was as smug as he imagined his own might look.

"Thoroughly" he told her. "Just... not for long."

"Ahh," she hauled herself up to an elbow, traced her fingers over his naked chest. "I can understand that."

It was wrong, all wrong, for what this was supposed to be; there shouldn't be this easy, comfortable banter. Lee knew he was staring, couldn't help reaching over to brush stray tendrils of hair back from her cheek. "I can't," he said, helplessly. "I can't get anything straight in my head. This -" he gestured at the bed, at their bodies lying close but not touching, "this doesn't happen to me."

"Looking like you do?" her tone was sceptical; Lee looked up, his smile faltering.

"That's not what I meant. I've done _this_ before, but..."

Kara's smile widened, and she reached up, brushed a hand across his cheek. "Thanks," she told him softly.

One more unconcious, unintentional act: Lee leaned in and kissed her. Not the lusty kisses of the hallway or the testing ones of the sidewalk or the desperate ones when he'd been naked above her and in her, but just as intent. Slow and deep and tender. Full of meaning. When he pulled back, her eyes were closed and her pulse was pounding visibly at the base of her throat.

Then she opened her eyes - green-gold-brown in a swirling of colours, even in the dimness of the hotel lamps - and stared, drew a shuddering breath. "I..."

Lee smiled at her.

"I should get going," Kara said quietly, reached down to the floor for her underwear, turning her face away.

---

Her jeans and boots were tangled at the end of the bed, and she could feel his eyes boring into her back as she struggled with them. It would have helped if her hands weren't shaking too badly to unlace the boots. It would have helped if she wasn't wishing she could turn around and take it back, ask him if she could stay. It was past moonset, still raining and dark as space outside the glass, and the thought of leaving this room - leaving Lee - made her eyes prickle uncomfortably.

_Just sex_, she tried to remind herself. _That's all it is, remember?_ Picket fences didn't fit too well with a flight schedule. Good - no, great - sex didn't necessarily mean love at first sight. She had a history of learning lessons the hard way, and didn't need a reminder now, no matter how easy it would be to interpret the way he kissed her as an open offer.

"No rush," he said, and his voice was funny. Distant, but shaky._ Gods_, she told herself. _It means nothing. Just... courtesy_. She felt the bed dip a little as he got up, heard him reach for his own jeans. His movements were slow when he walkedaround the half-wall and into the little kitchenette. "Want a bottle of water?"

"Yeah," she called over her shoulder, not game to look. He'd be over there, bare-chested, and this was already difficult enough. Unthinking she reached for her dogtags on the night-table; the metal was cold against her skin, so she shoved them into a pocket, reached down to retrieve her shirt. Lacing the ribbons behind her back with reluctant fingers turned out to be harder than she was able to manage.

The bed shifted again; Lee was sitting beside her. "Here" he said, nudged a waterbottle against her elbow. "Let me."

It was an echo she didn't need to hear. A memory flashed across her vision: her own reflection, mouth open and tossed tendrils of hair catching in it as she arched against his hands. Lee's fingers brushed bare skin as he threaded ribbons. Kara shivered.

"You're cold," he said quietly. "You don't have to go, you know."

"This is your room," she objected, her voice a little rougher than intended. Lee pulled back. "Sorry," she muttered. "I just don't think it's a good idea."

"Normally, I'd agree. But it's raining, and the bars closed hours ago, so unless you live in this hotel you've got to go out in it."

"It's ... not far."

"Then I'll walk you -"

Kara got up, the abrupt movement jarring him backwards. "What is this, Lee?"

He glared at her, ruffled a hand through his hair. "How the frak should I know? I didn't plan on any of this. I was just looking for -"

"That's what I thought."

Her jacket was rolled in his, dumped where they'd both left them by the door. The lining was damp; the garment was a sentimental favorite, a man's coat of brown leather, worn and not as warm as she might like considering the weather. She pulled it on, scented Lee's cologne on the collar, or maybe it had seeped into the leather where the jackets had lain entwined.

She knew his sweat was still on her skin, too.

"Look," she said quietly, turning back to see him at the window, his hand on the glass, "I'm sorry to be so curt, Lee, but I don't want to cross lines here. I can't afford to do that any more."

He walked over, stood just out of arm's reach, the lamplight gilding the lines of his muscles. "I understand."

His eyes said he did. She had to hope that it was true. "Thank you, Lee Adama," she told him, voice soft with honesty. "Things like this don't happen to me, either." Not waiting for an answer, Kara slipped out the door.

On the way down in the elevator, she pulled the dogtags out of her pocket and put them on, a tangible reminder of why she shouldn't want to change her mind. It wasn't until she looked up at dawn, having sat on the floor and stared out the rain falling on her balcony ever since she got back to the Fortuna, and saw her dogtags where she'd left them - lying with her discarded BDU's across her untouched bed - that she realised the ones around her neck were not her own.

-->>+ --


	6. Chapter 6

**-->>+ --**

**6.**

She was right. Of course she was right.

That didn't stop Lee hating her for being right, for being stronger than him, for sticking to the rules and leaving when the tryst was over. He never wanted to be in that situation again; better, he decided then and there, to be the one who left: even if it seemed cold or heartless, better not to play on the goodwill of his partner or encourage her to misinterpret his intent. Not that he thought he'd have any desire to be in anyone's bed for any longer than it took to get release. Not that he fooled himself, even for a moment, that any other chance fraks might in any way measure up to what had happened in his bed tonight.

He sat in the armchair, welcoming the chill off the glass where it intruded into the room, and stared at the rumpled sheets, the twisted covers. He knew the linen would smell of sex, of Kara, wished she'd stayed long enough to leave an imprint in the pillow. She hadn't left anything behind, though; not even the traditional token of appreciation, or a card with her call code as a tacit invitation to stay in touch. Not even the marks of nails on his skin.

Usually a slip of ribbon or a twist of silk, the tokens were a homage to a much older tradition where a warrior would wear his lady's colors in his sleeve. Nowadays, young people often wore them like trophies, knots of bright color pinned down their arms at Eros festivals and Bacchanals, proof of their desirability. Lee had never left one, never under these circumstances. He'd never even prepared a strip of ribbon before going out to find a casual partner. He'd jokingly given one to a girl on the Orion one year, once they'd been sharing a bunk on and off for months. She'd laughed, and blushed, but he never saw her wear it openly. He'd been grateful for her circumspection but hadn't been surprised at all when she drifted away, soon after, into something decidedly _not casual_ with one of the bridge crew.

Lee wished he'd had the forethought to snip off a shred of the ribbon that had threaded Kara's blouse, or asked her for it; she could have left her call code - if she had, would he even have waited until morning to use it? Would he have been able to resist the desire to bring her back? - but that was risky; if she wasn't looking for more, it was also unfair. But a token would have been nice: something tangible so that in the morning, when the hotel staff came in to change his sheets and make up the bed, he'd have some way of knowing it wasn't all a fantasy.

His hand still smelled of her. Lee propped his face in the palm of it, drew his leg up over the arm of his chair, closed his eyes.

He woke up to bright sunlight; Picon's traditionally unpredictable weather had done one of its swift and thorough reversals, so today the beach looked inviting, the ocean as still as a millpond after the restless heaving of the night before. Normality, Lee reminded himself. No expectations, no demands, just each day as it comes. Each night as it goes. He had nowhere he had to be, wasn't hung over enough to go back to sleep nor interested enough to switch on the vid and see what was happening in the Twelve Colonies.

He was, however, hungry. Ravenous, in fact, with his body aching pleasantly in a few places but apparently fully recovered; the thought of her, the sight of the sheet dragging on the floor - either were enough to stoke a different kind of hunger.

"Frak," he muttered, looking away, but the sunlight prismed off the window and highlighted the marks on the glass: the smears of her palms, the print of her lip. The round circles which could only have been sweat off her torso where he pressed her against the chill surface.

His body had not forgotten at all.

Lee stripped off his jeans and picked up his shirt and undershorts, tossed the garments in the corner and headed for the bathroom, determined to spend the last of her influence on him in the shower, think of her for the last time under the blast of hot water that would wash all traces away. It didn't take long. He dressed carefully, white shirt and blue jeans and trainers, made sure to hang the housekeeping sign out so the room would be clean before he came back, and went to find some breakfast. It was just one night, just one frak in a hotel room. He'd never see Kara again.

Only he did, because when he stepped out of the hotel lobby, nodding stiffly at the doorman, she was ten feet away, waiting for him.

---

"Kara," he stuttered, his face astonished for a moment before it closed down again, going a little distant. Kara bit her lip; that was as expected. He hadn't planned on looking for her.

She hadn't wanted to do this, either, but there were rules about military ID: you don't take them off, and if you do, you don't let anyone find out. And if she'd sent these to Lee, or dropped them off at the concierge desk, or done anything other than bring them herself, somebody would have found out that he'd broken both the written and unwritten standards.

She hadn't even known he was Fleet, let alone a pilot, and she couldn't do that to a fellow pilot.

"Lee," she started, "I'm sorry to bother you -"

"No bother," he interrupted. "What's wrong?"

"I -" Kara stopped, looked around. The sidewalk was crowded, the doorman eying them curiously. She could shove the damn things in his hand and go, but then he'd have no idea how she ended up with them, might even think she'd done it as a trophy, or that she'd set out to steal or misuse his ID. They might only have been a one-time thing, but Kara knew she did not want Lee Adama thinking ill of her. "Look, can we go somewhere? I'll buy you a coffee."

He hesitated, shrugged and then nodded, and five minutes later they were sitting in a vine-screened cafe-garden, steaming coffee in thick cups on the table and only a bored waiter for audience. "This is... awkward" she began at last, prompted by his inquiring gaze, "but I need to return these to you." She held out her fist: he raised his brows and put out a palm, and she let the tags fall into it with a sigh of relief.

His fingers closed very quickly around them; a glance at Lee's face showed him confused and beginning to be suspicious. "What the -"

"Look, I didn't mean to take them. Well, I did, but I wasn't stealing them. I just thought they were mine."

Lee's face hardened, went sceptical, right up until she tugged her own tags out of her shirt, let them rest between her breasts. He stared at them for a moment, then looked back up at her. "You weren't wearing any last night."

Kara heard the accusation in his tone. "Neither were you."

They stared at each other over the little table, and stared. Finally he shook his head. "You're fleet? That's ironic."

"Not only Fleet. I'm a pilot-instructor at Sparta. And you're a pilot too."

"You don't look like Fleet. Or act like it." Now he sounded resentful, and she couldn't quite figure it out. "Why'd you not wear yours?"

"I'm on leave. And in this town, pilot groupies are ten-a-credit. I'm not interested in them." Kara explained, feeling her own hostility sparking. "You, on the other hand, _do_ look like Fleet. But you also looked too much like Fleet not to be wearing tags... even on leave."

Lee stared at her, then abruptly laughed. "Figures. I come here, bound and determined to have two weeks away from the frakking military, and I not only take it back to my hotel room, but -" He stopped, his face settling into a wry expression.

"Ironic," she repeats. "Funny, isn't it? I get ordered off-base, practically escorted from my office by marine MP's, and told to take a break. Don't think about it, Deak told me. Stay away from the usual bars, don't hang out with pilots. Cut loose. And my first night out, I..." She bit her lip on the _fall for a superior officer_ that seemed to rise in her throat. Instead she shrugged, helpless.

Lee shook his head. "Sounds like we both tried."

"I can't even take leave without frakking up." The coffee was too weak; this wasn't how they brewed it in the mess; Kara put her cup back down, pushed it away with a fingertip. "Sorry to have to spoil the illusion, Captain."

Lee reached over, lifted her tags with his fingers and examined them. "No need to apologize, ... Lieutenant."

She grimaced, tried to ignore how the proximity of his hand to her chest was making her breath come in shorter. "It bothers you that I'm a pilot?"

"Why would you say that?"

He hadn't taken his hand away.

"You're a ranking pilot, with a battlestar posting. You could have stayed on-base if you had to be in Sparta; you could have kept your tags on, you could have found any number of people who understand the rules of the game in any number of bars that the Fleet types like to frequent. Instead, you came looking for something else."

"But I found you."

"And you wish I wasn't Fleet."

He dropped her tags as though they'd burned him; Kara scooped them up, dropped them back under her shirt. They radiated warmth - the trace of his touch - between her breasts, and he was looking there again, over her heart, tracing the subtle imprint of chain beneath fabric. "No," he said after a moment. "I wish you hadn't known the rules."

They didn't speak; he took a sip of coffee and looked at her. Just looked. Kara's head swum with possibilities that intrigued and terrified her. She took another sip of watery coffee to mask her confusion, then another. Then Lee reached over, brushed stray hair off her cheek.

Kara nearly dropped the cup.

"I was being honest, Kara. I hadn't planned on anything more than you, last night - in fact, if I'd known that I'd want more than the one night, I might even have walked away. But all I knew at the time was that I saw a woman who was beautiful and strong and free of restraint, of stupid codes and regulations. A woman who had no more expectations of me than good company... and I wanted her. What I didn't expect was that she'd be a match for me in so very many ways."

"You don't know me, Lee." It was a struggle to get the words out, when she'd rather just hear more of the same from his lips, but she had to warn him off. "I don't do 'normal' well. I screw up everything regular in my life. If I... if I had known how this would turn out, I might have walked away, too."

They were both trying not to give anything more away. Words hovered on Kara's tongue: her absolute ignorance of how people were supposed to care about each other, her lousy, frakked-up track record with men who couldn't handle being the stable one in the partnership, the regrets of getting involved with people who were supposed to understand her life - other pilots - and finding that none of them could handle being overshadowed by _Starbuck_.

And what Lee was trying not to say? She could only guess. He didn't want to be locked up in the military, didn't want to be rulebound or have to deal with responsibility outside his career as well as in. She didn't know his reasons, but he was right: in a lot of ways, they were very much the same.

"What now?" Kara asked, eventually, the long look and silence weighing on her. "Maybe I should -"

"Maybe we should change the rules," Lee interrupted. "I don't mean now. Gods know, I'm on leave for the next two weeks, and it's going to be tough enough to go back to _Orion_ without getting involved with a woman who can so easily get under my skin. But someday -"

That made sense. "Someday," Kara agreed. She tugged an old Panthers ticket out of the back of her wallet., swore briefly andlooked around to ask the waiter for a pen.Lee beat her to it, offering his own. Smiling, she scribbled a familiar string of digits and her name across the back, bold on the blank yellow card, and as an afterthought added her callsign: Starbuck. "Let's do this the old fashioned way, Lee Adama. Look me up... someday."

Lee's face thawed into a smile that made her want to grin like a lunatic. "You already convinced me, Lieutenant." He tucked the card into his pocket, bent close and brushed his lips across the corner of her mouth; Kara's eyes slid shut the moment she felt his breath on her skin. "Someday ... soon," he added, kissed her more softly still.

When she opened her eyes again, he was gone. Kara tucked his pen into the back pocket of her jeans, and smiled. "Mission accomplished, Deak" she said quietly, and wondered if he'd be pissedif she showed up for work the next day.

-->>+ --


	7. Chapter 7

-->>+ --

**7.**

He woke up thinking about ribbons, about the way dog tags would look swaying between her bare breasts, and wondered if he was ever going to stop fantasizing about Kara Thrace.

Lee Adama's berth on _Orion_ was the only private space in his daily life, and in former years, he'd have done his best to soften the clinical corners of it. He wasn't the centerfold-ogling type, but he remembered once pinning up photographs of girlfriends, of his mother and grandparents, a shot of the charming, dilapidated house he grew up in; college reminisences and good friends filling gaps between Viper stills, blueprint diagrams, flight schedules and his calendar. His brother had appeared - vitality frozen in time - in some of the relics of real life. Now the walls of his bunk were stark and bare, except for the calendar, its blank grids filling up, days marked off with boldly inked crosses. It was too hard to drift off looking at the life he was yearning to get back to; too hard to wake up to reminders of it. It was easier to wake up if he didn't dream about the things he was missing.

Except, of course, that he _was_ dreaming about those things, or, at least, about one of them in particular. One that wasn't technically part of civilian life either, given that she was a pilot herself, and that the most they'd had together was one night of sublime sex and an uneasy cup of coffee the next morning. Still, that had been sufficient to convince him he wanted more from his relations with her than a good time whenever he was in port. And anything 'more' was something that had to wait until he was done with Battlestars and flying shifts and spending a year on a tour to the outer stations, performing wargames and simulations in preparation for nothing. So nothing was on the wall, no distractions... other than the ones supplied by his very vivid subconcious.

There was only one prompt, one thing, other than the calendar, pinned on the wall of his bunk. Wedged above the daily planner was an oblong piece of yellow card with a name and some numbers and _'Starbuck'_ written in a flowing, confident hand. It probably didn't help him think about something else to have his only tangible reminder of her pinned up right where it was usually the first - and last - vision of each and every day. Realistically, he thought he should take it down, before the itch to do something about it n_ow_ became too great to withstand. Besides, Lee didn't even really need the card anymore; the numbers were stuck in his head like the combination of his locker or his Flight ID number, and given that he knew who she was and _what_ she was, he could have found her anywhere in the colonies with a single wireless call. Could have, but hadn't, not once in the four - no, nearly five months - since they'd parted on Picon. And he wouldn't. Not yet.

Lee sat up, knuckled his eyes, ignored the drowsy arousal still pulsing low in his gut; he had no time to deal with more physical distractions today. As D-CAG (one of the youngest in the Fleet) he had more to do with his work hours than he had hours to do them in: flight evaluations of his squadron, maintenance to oversee, keeping tabs on the medical and mental states of his direct subordinates... as well as his own personal duties of patrol and maintenance and standing a watch in CIC or the Flight Deck as assistant LSO.

It would have been nice if he'd been thought to deserve any of it. He'd never been afraid of work, or backed away from a challenge, but since the moment he'd set foot on _Orion_ and the CAG and XO had noted his surname, there hadn't been any other possible outcome. The worst part, Lee told himself as he got up, was that he actually _had_ earned his status... but there was no reward for doing simply what your superiors already expected of you. And of course, the other pilots, or most of them, had different expectations of him, ones he had no inclination to fulfil; it was almost more than he could stand to know his squadron fully expected him to trade on the family name, and when he didn't, decided it was due to arrogance, not shame.

"Morning, 'Pollo," he heard his bunkie Elektra (callsign: Legs, aptly, and one of the few people who didn't seem to give a frak about his surname) yawn in his direction as he shoved back his curtain. "You worked late."

"Yeah," he responded, his laugh a brief huff that didn't really show humor, "don't ever buck for d-CAG, Legs. You get to do everything the boss can't be bothered with."

"Privileges of rank," she grinned back. Legs was nice, and Lee half-ogled as he reached to the end of his bunk for some sweats: long blonde hair that she was twining into a braid, the long stems nicely displayed by the towel she had wrapped around her slim form. But his interest was mostly simple appreciation; when he closed his eyes in the shower, when he dreamed, it was someone more solidly built, more curved, more competetive that filled his vision.

"Not what I'd call 'em." His lower limbs clad, he stood up, stretched; Legs glanced over at him from her locker, and her grin flashed brilliantly. "What?"

"One of the best things about having the bunk over yours, Apollo. The view."

His laughter felt real that time. "Back atcha. But if that's the best, what's the worst?"

"That you're always in it."

"What?"

"Temptation, you moron. I'm a happily married pilot faced every morning with _that_." She nodded towards his torso. "Still, I can deal with that. But I _am_ getting curious as hades about why you've got Starbuck's digits pinned up in your bunk."

Lee felt the chill, the reflex response to a question he didn't want to answer, go through him, felt his face smooth into a mask. But Legs was a friend, and he couldn't cold-shoulder her about everything if he wanted her to _stay_ a friend. "You know Starbuck?" he deflected.

"Know her? Anyone who went through Sparta in the last three years knows about her. But she was a squadmate of mine in Basic and then in flight - Cadet Kara Thrace was one ofthe reasons I survived that first year in Delphi, in fact - and while we're not close, we look each other up from time to time."

"You did Basic on Caprica? wow. I figured you were a Virgon homebody all this time."

"I am, and don't change the subject. They shipped us to Delphi after three weeks because the spring floods had turned Ephesus into a mudbath. But how do you know Kara?"

Lee hesitated, then shrugged. "We met in Sparta when I was on leave."

"She kick your ass at Triad?"

"Pool." Legs laughed, and Lee narrowed his eyes at her. "She plays Triad?"

"No. She wins Triad. Not plays."

"Good to know."

Legs was dressing, but she hadn't looked away; Lee tried to ignore her scrutiny as he sat down again to lace his trainers. It didn't help. "Lee."

"Yeah?"

"Call the woman."

"Why?"

Elektra rolled her eyes, reached into the bunk and grabbed the card, brandished it in his face. "Starbuck's a magnet, but she's not easy to get close to. Occasionally she might choose a guy, but it's only ever a casual thing. And I never, _ever _saw her give her call-code to anybody. She gave this to you, she wants you to use it."

Lee took the card out of her fingers, felt it fit into his palm. Remembered Kara slipping it out of her wallet, the way her fingers had looked curved around his pen. Wondered if she'd kept the stylus the way he'd kept her card. He stuck it back behind the calendar's edge. "How do you know _I_ want to call _her_?"

Legs stared back at him, shook her head. "How many of your casual partners leave you their digits, Apollo?" He didn't answer, because they both knew that when they were in port he came back from his long off-shifts and emptied his pockets into the trash. "You kept hers."

Michaelson stuck his head through the hatch. "Apollo? CAG wants to see you."

Saved by the bell. "Frak. Thanks Mick." He got up and dressed rapidly, all the while knowing Elektra was frowning at the back of his head.

---

"Thrace."

"Incoming call for you, Lieutenant." The comms officer, a nice guy she'd turned down a few times, but gently, sounded sour this morning. Immediately, and like every other time her 'phone buzzed in the last few months, her thoughts went straight to the call she _hoped_ it would be; her stomach did a slow roll, like she'd just flipped her viper.

"Thanks, Dent," she said, fake cheer in her voice. "Who'd I piss off this time?"

"Call prefix says it's someone on a battlestar... call's coming subspace, so its a long ways out, sir."

"Wow. Guess I'm surpassing myself." She got the expected snort of laughter. "Put it through, willya?"

There was the usual two-tone signal of switchover, and her heart was in her throat. "Thrace..." The note of question in her own voice bothered her, but the thought that it might be Lee -

"Lieutenant!" It wasn't him. "Good to hear your voice."

"Major Rollins, sir, a pleasant surprise!" It was, even if it wasn't the surprise she was hoping for. Her former CAG, back on the _Bellerophon_ where she'd served a year after Officer training, was a gruff, sarcastic veteran who'd been a sharp pilot in his prime and was now XO on the ship. "What can I do for you, Rocky? Cigars this time?"

"Sure thing. You can bring 'em yourself, too."

"What? Is the _Bell_ heading into Picon space at long last?"

"Nope. Still on station out in Leonis territory, but you can wangle some leave time, can't you?"

"If I have a good reason. Somehow I don't think Deak is gonna buy the whole 'special delivery' thing, though."

"How about a retirement party?"

Starbuck dropped the pen she'd been lazily marking theory papers with. "What?"

"I'm being ousted," Rocky told her, but the way he said it made it clear that he didn't mind at all. "I'm two years from forced retirement anyway, Starbuck, and Command made me a good offer for a desk job until then. They had to make a few holes, after all."

"What for this time? Another downsize?

"Nope. Haven't you heard they're finally canning _Galactica_?"

She had, of course. Legendary ship, legendary commander, but both getting past their prime according to modern standards. "I'd forgotten that. So which tyro from Husker's crew is taking over on the _Bell_?"

"Tyro he's not - Ripper and I served a term together on Picon when he was just fresh out of the Academy; he'd be forty or so now, I'd guess. He's been Adama's CAG for close on a decade now. The _Galactica_'s being ceremonially decommissioned on the fifteenth, next month; Jack Spencer - that's Ripper - will be out here a day after. But Commander Peters wants to throw me a party and told me to round up the people I wanted to see. And that's you. And Fastball and Novey if I can figure out where the frakheads have got to -"

She should have been listening; Rocky had been a great CAG to start out with for a young reckless pilot. He'd been a steadying influence without being a crushing one, and it had been mainly his fault - the effect of his teaching - that she'd been so quickly picked up as part of the training corps and hauled back to Sparta. But after Rocky had mentioned _Adama_, she barely heard one word in three.

Commander of the Battlestar _Galactica_, William Adama. Husker.

A pilot on the _Orion_. A captain Adama. Lee.

And -

And a cadet in one of Strut's classes - nice guy, cute, but with a little too much brass and a little too little talent - who'd shot himself a few years back when Strut had flunked him out of Flight. His name had been Zak? something like that. He'd had a hell of a winning smile in the one class she'd taught his squad. She'd liked him. But Kara hadn't known his last name until it appeared on the inquest papers; it had never occurred to her before then that it might be more than the weight of his own disappointment that drove him to eat a bullet. _Adama, Zachary_. Twenty years old.

Oh, _frak_.

Rocky went on with his list of people, almost unheard, while she put the pieces together in her head. But when he stopped, prompted her with a questioning 'Starbuck?' she jerked her thoughts back to the present. "Sorry, Rocky - all these pilots, got me thinking. What?"

"So you'll come, won't you? On the fifteenth? Take a three day pass and fly yourself out here, come say so-long to an old man?"

"You got it, if Deak can spare me. I took a few weeks a few months back, not sure how much time I have left for vacations."

"Knowing you? Probably enough to help me move back to Picon after we both get over the hangovers."

"Maybe I better fly out in a Raptor then? Give you a ride back?"

"Sounds better than the shuttle I had in mind."

"Of course, I'm not sure you still fit a flight suit."

"If you can fit that ego in a helmet, I can fit my ass in a flight suit, Lieutenant."

"Yes, Sir."

"See you in a couple weeks, Kara."

Two minutes later, she hung up the 'phone again; Deak had no trouble with her going, was already lining up a Raptor for her and grumbling good-naturedly about how much crap their Hanger CPO was going to give him for letting a Viper jock near one of his precious sentry birds. But Kara sat, staring at the pen - Lee's pen - that lay on her pile of unmarked papers, wondering how in all the hells she'd not recognised the name when she'd heard it, months before.

Lee _Adama_. He wasn't just 'a pilot', he was _Apollo_.

She knew about Apollo, of course - youngest D-CAG in thirty years, reputation for being one hell of a pilot, the kind commanders love in their squadrons because they leave the ego _mostly_ at the flight deck door. And he was a model officer too; if rumor was to be believed. _Apollo_ might have been a joke - _son of Zeus_ - when they gifted him with the nickname, but it was more apt than any of them might be willing to admit. And because of that, because he was a good pilot _and_ a good man, everyone was sure there was some kind of flaw he was hiding.

Karahad heardthe tone in his voice when he'd spoken of Fleet service, about how he'd planned to get away from it for his entire leave, and figured she knew what the flaw was. Now she thought she knew why.

Lee's pen felt heavy in her fingers, but she ignored that; tried to go back to marking papers. It was hard, her mind kept wandering, turning over the memories, straying close to the ones in the hotel room that she dreamed about sometimes before she metaphorically yanked herself back into reality. It worked, sort of: Kara stopped thinking about that night, for a while. Instead, she wondered if he'd found out anything about her, since that morning in the city, if he'd heard about her reputation, if he'd thought about her at all since then.

If he was ever going to call.

-->>+ --


	8. Chapter 8

-->>+ --

8.

_"You wanted to see me, sir?"_ Why was it that whenever he heard those words out of his own mouth, he was about to have his father inflicted on him, yet again?

Yeah, the CAG wanted to see him, to send him up to see Commander Dumarr. After a trip back to the bunkrooms to shower and put his uniform on - one didn't go up to see the Boss in tracks and trainers, not even at breakfast - and then a fast walk through the wakening ship to the command level.

He didn't particularly like that part of the ship, of any ship. It seemed the minute you hit CIC territory, the corridors widened and arched more, the temperature of the artificial atmosphere dropped about ten degrees and the people started having masks for faces, himself included. The cheerful close quarters of combat-ready living were sacrificed for the trappings of rank, and those were things he couldn't really abide. It wasn't hypocrisy that he had intentionally put himself on the fast track to acquire rank, responsibility and a reputation for being the best: he wanted those things. Wanted them as badly as his father ever had.

Wanted them for the express purpose of tossing them all out an airlock once he'd proved he was just as good - or better - than his old man. Wanted them, because once he'd served a year as captain, he'd be in the same circle of command that his father had been, right up until the Armistice had interrupted his career.

Lee was going to see his old man the day he turned in his resignation. He was waiting for that hour, planning on it, the moment in time when he saw the elder Adama realise that his son was a man, got his viper wings and his rank pips and did it better, faster and smoother than he himself had managed, even in a war. And then he was going to see Lee walk away from it, because one of them, at least, realised there was more important things, and no amount of influence or string-pulling was going to stop him.

It was the only willing contact he'd have with Commander William Adama for the next ten years, at least.

Unfortunately, there'd be _un_willing contact, much, much sooner than that. In two weeks in fact. _'You wanted to see me, sir?'_ would probably be useful in that situation, too.

Commander Dumarr had been nonplussed to realise that Lee didn't want to go to _Galactica_'s retirement, though; he'd been surprised and then disapproving to have to make it an order. But Lee's excuses - he'd already used all his leave time, some in advance even, that he'd had too much work to do to make the three-day Viper round trip to Caprican space - had fallen on obstinately deaf ears: he was going. The ceremonial farewell was traditional to a retiring Battlestar, and when it was also the farewell to one of the few still-serving combat veterans of the Cylon War, there was no chance at all that the son of said veteran, being under orders despite his reservist status, would be able to skip it.

The military liked its symmetry and poetic endings way too much; a peacetime indulgence, Lee supposed as he stalked back through the cold, cathedral-arched corridors, his footsteps ringing on theshiny metal deck,and went in search of more familiar territory. Well, Lee liked contrasts, himself. Black and white. Polarities. Clear-cut differences. He especially liked them when they made a point.

The bunkroom was quiet - empty save for Hoppy, his left foot protruding from the curtain as always as he snored in his rack - and Lee sat down for a minute on his own bunk instead of changing back into his sweats. He was furious, with Dumarr, with the military, with his father. With himself, too, that he couldn't accept the order as graciously as ever, couldn't be the good soldier that he'd trained himself to be, that he'd come off looking like a brat in front of his C.O. That, because the very idea of a ceremony to honor his father and the ship the man loved more than any animate being made his jaw clench and his stomach churn, he'd lost control of his emotions yet again.

Not much made that happen; usually when he felt his patience waning, his teeth gritting as he went about his duties, he took leave, assigned himself an extra CAP, or got drunk: something to ease the strain. But it didn't happen often, not unless his father was involved. Muffling a curse so Hoppy wouldn't be disturbed, Lee leaned down and tugged his uniform shoes undone, yanked them off and then leaned back into his bunk, as he did so catching sight of his calendar... and Kara's card.

He stared, felt a trickle of heat leaven the cold fury. That had been another time he'd lost control, too - and it hadn't been a bad thing; but good. Very good. When he'd woken up, an hour and a half ago, he'd woken imagining slow, dizzying sex with the woman whose name was on that card, and it had been a good way to start the day. Now he thought - brief, brilliant flash of imagination - of Kara Thrace, naked in his rumpled bunk, grinning up at him the way she'd grinned over the pool table. Saying in that low, smoky-toned voice: _"you wanted to see me, sir?"_

He'd definitely prefer to hear _her _say that.

Lee Adama made a deal with himself: if he had to do this stupid thing, go to _Galactica_, to his old man's retirement, he was going to claim a reward before he left, something to buffer his mood, someone else to think about during the three days that were sure to be a round-trip to Hades. Before he left, he was going to call Kara Thrace. And he was going to find some way to relive that unforgettable night in Sparta City, and this time, he wasn't going to let her out of the bed until all the details of his coming ordeal were obscured by better memories.

---

Eight in the evening, dark for more than an hour, and still Sparta was sweltering. On a planet known for its erratic weather, this coastal city never went more than three days without rain, but presently the Nereus Coastwas bakingin the hottest, driest summer in thirty years. The beaches had been crowded that day; the lucky nuggets who had theory classes (in the climate-controlled Flight suite) had worn their cool, crisp undress khakis and gloated over those who'd had to struggle into sweatbox 'planes inflight suits. But now it was eight o'clock, the humid compound was quiet, and Kara Thrace was still at work on class prep and assessment schedules in her tiny, stifling office.

It wasn't that Starbuck was disorganized; the three-and-a-half years in which she'd been an instructor would have been maddening if she hadn't been mentally disciplined enough to do what she needed to do before it was necessary to panic over it. It wasn't even that she was overburdened with work: she had the three day schedule for her three squad of nuggets planned out well in advance. But it was the night before she was scheduled to fly out to _Bellerophon_ and the shady quadrangle had emptied of sweating cadets, the rest of the offices in her building showed dark windows as the rest of her colleagues had abandoned work for their air-conditioned quarters. But Kara was still at her desk. Doing things she didn't need to be doing. Procrastinating.

Oh, not about the trip out to the _Bell_, she had no qualms about that. In fact, despite the Raptor she was flying for the trip, she was looking forwards to it: two hours to reach the Rampling Station, in deep orbit off the mining planet of Arges and pick up three other pilots (nobody she knew) on their way to Rocky's send-off, a short blip to the jump point and then one FTL hop to her old ship, in deep station well off Leonis. No - no worries about the flight at all; she'd even managed to wangle an ECO for the trip who wouldn't try and tell her how to fly that glorified station-wagon: Crash had been one of her cadets a few years back, after all. And it would be good to get out into space again; the short patrol flights, no more than an hour or two given atmospheric burn, that she got to fly as part of Sparta's wing just didn't fill the need, let alone training flights where she couldn't take her mind off the nuggets for an instant, not even to enjoy the view. Plus, space was cold, which right now would be a nice change.

No, she wasn't nervous about the flight. Kara realised she was stalling about leaving her office because she'd done something stupid, yet again, and under the papers on her desk was a small green notepad with some very useful numbers on it. Yes, that morning she'd hooked into the military database and found the call-code for _Captain Lee Adama_. Leavingthe office meantshe wouldn't call him, and she very much wanted to call him.And given her appalling inability to resist temptation, she was surprised she hadn't dialled those numbers hours ago.Of course, she had her moments, Kara acknowledged ruefully. Startlingly, when faced with the temptation to stay and sleep beside Lee Adama, she hadn't given in to it.

Kara might be was a screw-up by nature, but in hindsight, that had been a screw-up of interplanetary magnitude. It had cost her precious sleep many times since then, wondering all the potential what-if's; it hadhighlighted herlack of self-confidence (where relationships that weren't just about sex were concerned) and made her wonder if Lee's interest had been real or not. After all, if she'd hurt his pride with her precipitous departure, who could blame him for stringing her along a little in punishment?

It didn't seem like something he'd do, not that she could really tell, based on their brief and quite physical acquaintance, but then it could be just what she deserved. So determined not to get herself into a painful situation, she'd grasped at the straws of convention rather than take a shot at something better: obviously she was a coward, too.

Starbuck, she reminded herself, would pick up that 'phone, dial in the _Orion_'s code then Lee Adama's then add the suffix that meant personal traffic. But Starbuck acted on instinct; Starbuck wasn't a coward, would gleefully fly through a meteor storm for the thrill of it. Kara Thrace, on the other hand... Kara Thrace couldn't even stay on good terms with her easygoing father, let alone (and let a long way away) her mother. Kara Thrace had loved only two things before she found flying, and the Fleet: one had been pyramid. The other had been a pyramid player. Neither had been a fairy-tale. No; Kara Thrace wanted very much to call that number, even though, conventionally speaking, it was up to _Lee_ to call _her_. But Kara Thrace didn't believe in happy endings anymore.

She sighed, closed the folder on lesson prep that wouldn't be needed until a month after she'd returned to Sparta, got up and reached for her jacket. She didn't want to put it on; it had hung over the back of her chair all day, starched collar wilting with the weight of her pilot's insignia and the heat and was warm with body heat. Time to go home, stand in the shower - tepid water, two degrees above outright cold - and maybe dig up some of that herbal tea her old roommate had enjoyed. A stiff drink would be better, make her sleep faster, but she was flying a Raptor in the morning, a long flight, and if she screwed up, booze better not be the reason. Not that she'd screw up; despite the CPO's opinion, flying a Raptor was no more difficult than flying a Viper. It was _landing _the heavy, clumsy minibus-of-a-space-vehicle that was the fun -

The 'phone rang.

The sudden noise in the stillness of the office made her jerk upright next to the desk. "Frak." It was probably just Deak, seeing the light on in her office window, still, and about to read her the riot act about long flights and plenty of sleep. Kara picked up. "Thrace."

"Hey, Kara."

It was Lee.

-->>+ --


	9. Chapter 9

Sorry to all for the delay on this; I've been somewhat sidetracked in real life and by a couple other works. The next chapter is not far off, either; I am working on it now.

Many thanks also to my reviewers: **Ammonite**, **Nytel**, **yannik**, **MirethGuilbain**, **starbuckjade**, **Ash234**, **BeethovenFA03**, **Choosing** **Sarah**, **Cat in a box**, **silver-midnite**: most appreciated. I'm sorry if I haven't responded personally to you all. Life has included little spare time in the schedule just lately. Please accept a health dose of pilots and flirtation as a form of apology. I'm glad you're all enjoying it; if, like me, the lack of pilot interaction on the show is currently frustrating you, then perhaps this will help.

-- + --

**Chapter 9**:

Lee hadn't thought a great deal about what he was doing there; he'd planned just one thing - call Starbuck before he left the _Orion_ - and that had fallen through. Too busy, too nervous... _okay_, he admitted, _too frakking scared_: five months was a long time to not make a phone call in, especially when he was now standing on the same planet - on the same military base - as her, and hoping like hell he could convince her to see him. It didn't just_ look_ bad, it _was_ bad. He was flying out in the morning, and how, for the love of Aphrodite, was he supposed to make this seem like he wasn't just stopping by, hoping to get laid?

Of course, he was. Hoping, that was. But that wasn't the only reason he was there: he'd missed her, impossibly so, given the circumstances. She was a high point in a very low time, and the one thing that made the idea of the coming few days bearable. Still, one should hardly tell a woman one could so easily fall for that the only reason he was on the same planet was not actually her, but his old man's retirement party. No matter which way he explained, it would sound like opportunism. _'Just passing through, you know? Figured I would look you up'_ was an approach that might work within a few weeks of their last meeting, but Lee figured half a lunar year was pushing it.

It would have been so much easier if he'd done this from his ship, he realized, staring at the 'phone in the officer's locker of the main hangar, Sparta Base. The timing had been screwed up by things out of his control, problems on the flight deck, a troublemaker in his squadron; he'd fallen asleep at long last after smoothing everything out and woken up with a bare half hour to spare before launch. No time to eat, let alone make interstellar personal calls. If he'd had a chance, Lee knew he could have explained it - he had a little time, a layover on a long flight, would she have a couple hours free? - without it sounding like a proposition. But if he picked up that comm right now, called her and told her he was there, it was treating her like a convenience. Which she wasn't: Kara Thrace was anything but convenient.

Damned inconvenient, as a matter of simple fact. He'd had no plans to get himself entangled, either emotionally or physically, with anyone; not this year, not for any longer than it took to create a little mutual pleasure, at any rate. And seeing there'd been absolutely no intentions on either side beyond that, the strength of his interest in a repeat arrangement both angered and baffled him, but there it was: he wanted more of Kara. Even after he found out she was Starbuck. Even after he'd learned more about her reputation for getting into, and out of, trouble. Even after it became obvious that she was as blindsided by the effects of their liaison as he was. What 'more' might eventually mean, he wasn't yet willing to consider, but if it meant more of her company, both in and out of bed, he wouldn't be sorry at all.

The 'phone wasn't moving, and he wasn't moving, and he realised he had fourteen hours only before he had to be back in the Hangar, suited up, to fly out and face his old man. The thought wasn't pleasant; if he didn't see her, then he'd just spend the night in temporary quarters, staring at the ceiling. If he did see her, and even if things didn't progress to a bed for different reasons - Lee had a healthy dose of masculine optimism in that regard, but he wasn't stupid - then at least he'd have something else to think about.

He picked up the handset, mentally discarded the three digit planetary code, punched in the numbers as he'd imagined doing a thousand times a month since the last time he saw Kara. Waited, his blood pounding furiously in his temples, as it rang. Two rings. Three. Four - she wasn't there? it was an office number, of course, she'd probably have gone back to -

"Thrace."

The voice was unmistakable, and Lee found the anxiety in his gut loosening, all at once, being replaced by anticipation. "Hey, Kara."

She said nothing for a second, then he heard her exhale, could almost picture her smile. "Lee. I was just thinking about you."

He grinned. "And what did you decide on, an airlock, or were you just going to land a Raptor on me?"

Kara laughed, and it sent a new thrill rippling down his spine; he felt a hint of arousal and had to gulp cool air. "Too humane, both of those," she told him. "I had something a little more tortuous in mind."

Five months, and it might have been yesterday: the repartee, and its effect on his body, the lightness of soul, the way everything else seemed suddenly quite distant. "Is it too twisted of me to admit that I'm somehow intrigued?"

"Probably," she shot back, "but I'll tell you anyway, next time your ass is in the vicinity."

Ahh, about that... Lee winced inwardly. "Funny you should mention it..."

There was a silence, and when Kara spoke again, a drawl of sarcasm tainted the good humor. "Long way to come for a booty call, Captain."

"Worth every mile, though, Kara." Levity was worth a shot, especially with flattery into the bargain. "Look, I'm not here for long, and I'll understand if you can't -"

"No," she interrupted, "I can. Where are you?"

"The main hangar, in the officer's rack. I need to wash up, but maybe we could get something to eat?" It wasn't just courtesy; he was starving. He'd stand in even more need of sustenance if he somehow managed to get back in Kara's good graces, if he was lucky.

"I could stand something other than mess cuisine," she agreed. " And Merrick's makes a good burger. I'll meet you outside the Hangar in twenty, okay?"

"That's great," Lee heard himself answer, followed swiftly by the buzz of signal failure, which meant she'd hung up. He looked at the droning handset and wondered at which point precisely this whole idea had drifted out of his control. But with nineteen minutes until Kara showed up - and he seriously doubted she'd wait if he wasn't already on the pavement when she showed - he didn't have time to consider it.

---

One got accustomed to surpressing one's vanity, in the military, not that Kara had ever been overendowed with appreciation for her own appearance; looking at herself in the foggy bathroom mirror, Kara thought ruefully that she had no reasons for vanity. At least, not so far as looks were concerned. Good skin, wide eyes, and a certain elfin charm did not equate to big breasts, long legs and hair, or magazine-cover features. Her own lines were too marked, too strong, for fashion; her mouth was too wide, her expressions too dramatic. Sex appeal was one thing she knew she didn't lack, but for the first time in quite a while, Kara Thrace wasn't simply concerned with finding someone to frak for a while.

She'd never really been any good at the dating thing. What was the point? Easier not to deal with the whole issue. But with Lee, she found herself wanting to be pretty, wanting to make him wish he'd called her sooner, and the realization left a sour taste in her throat. _Frak that_, she hissed at her reflection._ I don't dress up for this. It's not a date. S_he hesitated over jeans and a halter, then tossed them aside and reached for her undress khakis. If he was going to call her up without warning and want to see her, then he could deal with the no-frills version. Her uniform was comfortable, and it cut through the crap: no misunderstandings this time. If they ended up frakking, it would be her turn to decide if it went further, and she wasn't going to play-act to make things more comfortable for him.

Five minutes. Kara laced her boots halfway and tied them off, and went looking for her car keys, glad that she'd tidied the place up a few days ago. The worst of the mess was confined to her office, where her usual stacks of files looked like slightly drunken sentinels on a fairly crowded post. She had clean sheets, even, on her neatly-made bed, although being glad about fresh bedding seemed uncomfortably close to surrender, under the circumstances. _Who are you kidding, Starbuck?_ her conscience asked. _If you hadn't given in already, you wouldn't have come back here for a shower and clean skivvies, would you?_

_Maybe not_, her pride answered on the way out the door. _But at least I can make him work for it_.

The car - a military sell-off lightly armored vehicle, with all-wheel drive and a motor fit for a tank, perfectly suited to her reputation and habits - rumbled to life and she refused to gun it as she pulled onto the main concourse. The hangar was on the opposite side of base to the domestic quarters, though nowhere in Sparta could escape the hum of Vipers in atmo, and the long, straight, well-lit military street was bare of traffic; she didn't need to speed to make it on time. Right on time. Twelve seconds before twenty minutes ticked around, she pulled up precisely in front of the Hangar, and there he was, Lee, stepping out of the marine-guarded main doors in BDU's just like hers. Crisp and precise, his short hair damp in the light of the security lamps, his skin still flushed with warmth from the shower, or the flight, or both. Or maybe even her.

_Gods_, she thought, the impact of seeing him again like a blow to the solar plexus, _please let it be me_. Then her ego mentally retched over her pathetic eagerness, and she pulled herself together. "Captain," she said politely.

He opened her passenger door and smiled at her uneasily. "Lieutenant," he said, eventually, and climbed in. The marines saluted, and almost before he had himself buckled in, Kara planted a foot on the gas. He seemed to be searching for words, and rather than help him along, she accellerated down the concourse, headed for the main gate to Sparta City. Over the roar of the motor, he found something to say. "How've you been, Kara?"

"Busy," she answered, threw him a glance. He wasn't acting like an ass, at least, and some of her pique melted a little at the edges. "Cadets are worse than schoolkids, you know; if there's something they shouldn't do, it's the first thing they want to try. I guess I should be glad that what they try only gets them killed in the simulators and not for real."

"But you like it? Like teaching?"

Was he just asking a polite question? Did it matter? "Yes, and no. I don't get to fly enough, at least, not for real. I spend more time in the sims than a cockpit, most weeks." They passed the gates, and the two marines, their duty tunics looking black rather than blue in the yellow glare of headlights, saluted her. She slowed marginally, waved acknowledgement. "It's not really a job for the ambitious, either. If you're good enough to be pegged for an Instructor role, you're going to stay pegged. I'll have a compulsory term to serve in another year, one tour on a Battlestar, but after that, unless I get a promotion for some reason, I'll be back here pushing papers and babysitting."

"Then why stay?"

The question was curiously intent, and she risked a glance at him. "The pay's decent, the hours are better than regular duty, and I have a boss that takes rules and regs with a grain or two of salt. If Deak gets kicked upstairs, I'd probably buck for a space posting tomorrow."

"Yeah? But you could get paid a helluva lot more flying Civilian craft, you know. Better perks."

That was true, as far as it went, but unless you made it as a contractor test-pilot - which was still, at least according to the paperwork, a military role - you weren't really flying. Those transports, shuttles and oversized inter-planetary 'buses didn't count. Not to anyone who'd flown a viper; surely he knew that. "Flying what, though?"

His face slid into a wry grin, she saw it in the flash of illumination as they pulled into Merrick's parking-lot. "You have a point."

Seats were scarce - it was a steak house five minutes from a military base, midweek or no midweek, it was crowded - but Kara knew people. The bouncer grinned and waved her on through; the crowd at the bar, more than half of them third-year cadets who greeted her with a chorus of _sir_'s and _Starbuck_'s were swiftly bypassed as Jacey Merrick herself came out to find them a table. Lee was looking faintly stunned at the ease of it: a table on the patio outside, lit with the regular skeins of colored lights, in a relatively quiet corner, menus and a jug of icewater garnished with lemon and mint, all in moments. He poured them both a tumblerful, leaned back in his seat and stared at her, slowly shaking his head.

"One of the perks of being an instructor?" he inquired.

It was a nice, if hot and somewhat steamy, night; the water pitcher was already dewed with condensation, and in between the party lights and the bar signs and the city's omnipresent glow, she could see him well enough. It was almost a surprise to realise she hadn't exaggerated his attractions in her own mind. Kara felt herself relax at the bemusement in his face. "Not really. Jace's kids are both cadets."

"Oh. An apple for teacher, then?" Lee's attempts not to smile made him look more than a little wicked.

"If you like. But it's not as crooked as it sounds. The officers on base at Sparta have a standing arrangement with the house here: there's always one or two tables available for us on weeknights. The apple, if you want to call it that, was the personal service."

"I see." The colored lights meant she couldn't quite make out how blue his eyes were - her memory of them seemed almost unlikely, but she knew it wasn't - but she could tell the expression in them. "It's good to see you, Kara."

The remainder of her pique evaporated, and she smiled at him, then, not quite caring if it was pathetic to admit she felt likewise. He smiled back. His hands were on the table, fingertips a moment away from hers, and moving. Reaching out, she could see him doing it.

The waiter, a tall, willowy girl with an expression of appreciative interest for her companion, appeared by the table. "What can I get you?"

Kara wanted to tell her to get lost. "I'll have the number three burger," she said, trying not to sound like a bitch. "With fries."

Lee flicked a glance over the menu. "Steak roll, no onion" he said, after a moment. "Fries and bacon."

"Great choice!" the girl probably would have said the same thing if he'd ordered raw liver, to go, but she wrote it down. "Beer?"

"No thanks." Kara began, and caught Lee's surprised glance. "I'm flying in the morning."

"Me, too," he agreed. "Citrus bitters for me."

"Make that two."

The waitress sidled off, her hips an exaggerated swing, but Lee wasn't looking; Kara suppressed a triumphant grin and the immediate mental backlash: _when in the name of Hades had she become such a damned adolescent_?

They made smalltalk again over their meals, talked about their experiences in flight-school, and every successive minute, Kara found herself wishing she hadn't been so by-the-book about this. Noticing he ignored the waitress with the suddenly obvious cleavage, and watching him eat, his obvious appreciation for non-reconstituted foods combined with his appetite, only served to whet hungers of her own. He sucked steak sauce off his fingers. He licked his lips. He looked at her.

Kara pushed her plate away, the scant remains of her meal suddenly nowhere near as inviting as finding somewhere to explain to him just what that look was doing to her. Lee's glanced down at it, back up at her, his eyes suddenly penetrating. "Too much, if you're flying tomorrow?"

Her ego bristled, momentarily displacing her longing. "I'll have you know I have a cast-iron stomach, Apollo."

His polite grin held a teasing hint of disbelief. Kara laughed. "Don't believe me, flyboy? You _do_ know I have keys to the academy's sim suite, don't you?"

He got up, tossed enough credit notes on the table to cover both meals and a tip for the overenthusiastic waitress - a small tip, Kara was glad to note - and held out a hand. "Starbuck, that sounds a hell of a lot like a challenge to me."

Maybe so, she agreed, silently; but as they walked out of Merricks with their palms pressed together, she thought the bigger challenge was going to be keeping her mind on the sim, instead of on her opponent.

-- + --


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**. _Please note, this chapter contains graphic elements of sex. I figured those who like pilots could use a little of this kind of therapy given current circumstances on the show. I admit, also, that Lee gets a more prolonged voice in this particular chapter; that's unusual for me, as I tend to channel Kara a little more clearly. Still, it will balance out with coming events, and if Lee gets the quanitity, Kara gets the quality. Enjoy._

_Leda_

-- + --

Lee was fairly sure he remembered the Sims complex at Sparta; he'd certainly spent enough time there, and not even six years and the clear moonlit night could make the squat, cream-painted brick building they pulled up in front of look like the sprawling technological terrace he recalled so clearly. Kara wrenched at the handbrake and turned off the motor, though, so he shot her a questioning glance, the light in the building's entryway just enough to see her answers by.

"My place" she said, shortly, her cheeks darkening a little. "Parking in front of the sim suite... well, let's just say it wouldn't be a good idea."

It took effort not to frown, to make his tone lighter: "are we about to bend some regs?" He had a reputation of doing the right thing - well, he did _now_ - but that wasn't the reason for his hesitation. Spending the night in the base guardhouse for being caught in sims after hours was not really the entertainment he'd had in mind for the night.

Kara laughed softly. "Nah, I have the run of the place," she told him, jerked a chin over her shoulder and led him towards the sidewalk. "C'mon, it's not far. No rules being broken tonight, captain," she grinned at him. "It's just that if the marine night patrol sees me parked out front, they usually come in to watch. And if they do that, my boss'll know I'm here, the night before a long flight, and I'll get one of those friendly little chats about pushing too hard, again."

"He gives you a hard time?" Lee shelved the 'long flight' comment for further thought while they walked: he knew his limits with lack of sleep and flight time, but he didn't want to screw with Kara's; she seemed unconcerned. But then again, maybe all she had in mind was _sims_.

"Deak? Hells, no. He's fine. He's tough when he has to be, but mostly it's me giving _him_ a hard time, not the other way around." They turned a corner off the main concourse and she led him up a gravelled walkway to a building that was definitely familiar. "How long has it been since you were in a sim, Lee?"

He thought about that. The console sims on most battlestars didn't even come close to the training facilities on some of the new capital ships, and if he recalled correctly, none of those even approached the realism or response time of the Academy's. But then again, sims weren't Vipers, either. No Viper jockey would ever exchange the one for the other. "Six years, give or take, seeing I wouldn't want to compare the little VR set on _Orion_ with the one here."

"Long enough," she remarked, cryptically, unlocked the door and pressed her thumb into a biometric lock. "It'll be pretty different to how you remember it, I think. We've made some changes in the last two years."

Two minutes later, Kara led him into a darkened suite and ran a hand wholesale across a bank of switches: the flood of illumination was blinding, for a moment, and then he felt her hand on his elbow. "Sorry. I should have warned you. Blink fast for a moment, it'll help."

Lee obediently worked his eyelids, shuffling away the resultant moisture. "Frak. These places used to be as dim as the underclassmen's locker-rooms. What gives?"

"A whole new virtual system," she was smiling at him, he realised as the light faded to acceptable levels. And when she smiled like that, he couldn't help but smile back. "Now we have 'em lit like classrooms, so that the rest of a squad can watch and learn while the sim is running. Funny thing about 'em when they're dark, though - most of the kids wind up falling asleep or -" Lee bit the inside of his cheek at the sight of that grin. It was purely wicked, the kind from the elevator in his hotel, the kind she wore when her hand had been ... _frak_. He bit a little harder. _Later for that, Lee_.

"You were a nugget once, too," he reminded her, his own grin tilting suggestively. "Didn't it have a certain effect on you, too?"

Kara winked, but didn't answer immediately, instead leading him over to a mock-cockpit, it's windows opaqued and silver, and slid it back. "Strap yourself in, and lets see, shall we?"

Lee watched her trip switches on the center panel between the two 'Vipers' and then lift herself into the other console. He followed suit, sliding the helmet off the control stick and settling it into place over his head before he slid the canopy shut. The moment he did, he felt the familiar trace of cool air across his cheek: _just like the real thing_. Then the canopy flickered momentarily and he was surrounded by the grey fist of a launch tube, realistic to the last detail, from the uniformed figure of an LSO at the launch window to the glowing displays of his console. He blinked. "Frak me."

"Maybe later," he heard her reply, laughing, her voice taking on the characteristic buzz of comms traffic as it reached his ears. "Ready for launch, Apollo?"

"That's a rog, Starbuck," he fell into patrol language by habit, but wondered if the illusion would hold up to this part of the Viper experience. Launch was inexplicable, if you hadn't been through one. And VR couldn't match the sheer expenditure of force, the sudden hike in adrenaline. "Apollo set and good to go."

"Copy that," she replied. "Launch, this is Viper two-oh-three and Viper two-one-one, requesting launch clearance."

Lee assumed she was addressing a computer, and was proved right when the familiar, slightly androgynous tones of the sims programme in use on most Colonial ships responded. So did his body, then, tensing and settling automatically, as though for a real launch. Lee grimaced self-mockingly; no matter what he thought of the military in general, he still loved flying. His body still loved flying. But this wasn't really flying, was it? A moment later, he had to reconsider: whatever they'd done to this sim suite, the 'launch' shoved him back in his seat, pressed his body into the cushions, and he let his ship ride the thrust for a moment longer than usual in surprise before kicking in his engines. "Gods above, Starbuck, what the frak was that?"

She laughed again. "That, captain, was an adaptation of the minor grav field generators used in Raptors and rescue vehicles. Introducing a realistic launch sim means the nuggets are less frightened, less disoriented, after a real launch, if they've been trained on one of these."

Lee experimented, threw his ship into a short spiral, felt the 'weight' of thrust kick in again, like launch. "It's pretty frakking realistic," he agreed. "I'm loathe to admit it, but now I feel uncomfortable that I'm not in a flight suit."

"Well, let's keep you distracted, shall we? I'm booting up a graduate level sim, randomised, and a slowly escalating number of Cylon ships. That should get us warmed up."

"Sounds like fun." He marvelled for a moment at how the sim ship seemed the tiniest bit faster to react than the average Viper, banked his craft in a wide loop around the companion ship he could see out his starboard window. "This is pretty damn good for a sim, you know."

"Yeah," she agreed. "But it should be. The whole point is to forget that it's not real."

He heard her sigh, looked out his window again and was stunned to realise he could actually _see_ her, helmet and BDU's, through whichever elaborate system of cameras that the console employed. "But? I'm sensing a 'but' in there."

"You're a hotshot pilot, I hear," she retorted. "It's not just like the real thing, is it? Tell me why."

"Yes sir, lieutenant-instructor, sir," he grinned, rolled his eyes as he saw her wrinkle her nose at him. It seemed obvious: the sim handled exactly like a mark-seven Viper, though with that slight improvement in response. "It's faster, the response time."

"Actually," Starbuck replied, "testing shows - heads up, Apollo. We have Toasters inbound."

Lee's scanners picked them up too, and he felt his playfulness dissipate, the hard edge of flight training taking over. "Roger that, Starbuck. I'm on your wing."

"Acknowledged." That was all that was said; settling into place just off her port wing, Apollo mirrored her ship's maneuvers, assessing her as much as he did the Cylon ships now coming into visual, appreciating the way she angled her flanks to present the smallest target both to their sensors and their guns. He recognised the attack pattern by the way she cut thrusters early, found himself riding his own just enough to cover her without giving the game away, and then the Cylons, their flat, half-moon profiles and sweeping scanner eyes familiar despite his never having seen a real one, were on them.

The first pair rocketed past, and Apollo knew without craning his head around that they'd bank and follow, arming missiles; both Vipers feinted into what seemed like an evasive move, but wasn't. Starbuck's bird came around hard, Lee's sticking close, and they both locked on their assailants quickly, all too easily. The canopy screens bloomed with the double blaze of destruction.

"Nice," Kara said. "But it only gets harder from here."

And it did; harder and harder, till Lee was sweating into the helmet and they cut the chatter back to a minimum. He found it harder still to keep on her wing, couldn't quite accept the supreme confidence of his wingman's maneuvers. She twisted and turned, more than once cut her engines back almost to a stall in order to turn her bird on the proverbial coin. She was, quite literally, the best sim partner he'd ever had; in keeping up with her, he had to stretch his own wings much further and faster than he had in a very long time. And in the end, when the 'fuel' light blinking on his console told him it was game over, he turned the bird automatically for home.

"I think we both know how to land by now," she said, and then the sim abruptly cut out. The windows blanked, the console darkened, and Lee sat there a moment in disoriented darkness before he shook himself and slid the canopy back. He tugged the helmet off and turned to watch as Kara swung both legs over the side of her cockpit and landed lightly on the floor. "Not bad, Apollo," she grinned at him, leaned against the side of the V.R. console and scrubbed a hand back through her hair, turning the damp tendrils spiky. "Not bad at all. I don't think I've broken a sweat like this in the sims since basic flight. Want to run a head-to-head?"

Lee let himself stare: exertion had darkened the gilt hair, and her face was flushed with warmth and adrenaline. He'd first seen her dressed with a touch of casual allure, and compared to that moment, most men might find her current appearance offputting. But Lee knew what she was feeling, didn't he? The blood was pounding in his veins just like hers, with the same exhilaration. Suddenly it felt like he knew her very well, as though the few hours they'd spent together were outside time, stretching into decades, compressing into a series of heated instants. The first time they'd parted, he'd told Kara Thrace she was a match for him in many ways, and if he'd doubted his own words at all in their months apart, he didn't doubt them now. Nor could he doubt the fact that she had, actually, 'killed' more raiders than he had in the sim.

Shaking his head, he hauled himself out of the cockpit. "Maybe next time," he said, shrugged out of his uniform shirt and swiped his sweaty face with it, "because if it's anything like playing pool with you, we'll be here all night."

Kara's face turned up in a slow, sexy grin, her cheeks pinking slightly. "And I'd probably kick your ass, sir." Her lifted eyebrow challenged him. "Still, you'd be a challenge, I think. That was fun."

Her words weren't outright praise - he rather thought she didn't do that often - but her eyes were practically glowing with appreciation, and Lee felt a surge of something he couldn't quite define: resentment and pricked ego and appreciation and pride and that honest-to-gods awe of her. He felt it bubble through the adrenaline and become abruptly physical. He took a step closer. "I'm glad you enjoyed it, Starbuck."

Her grin widened, her eyes wicked above the curve of her cheek. "I always like coming out on top, sir."

"Is that so?" Lee remembered feeling light-headed, almost dreamy, the last time he'd been in this position with her, riding the buzz of their competitive friction, but this time he wasn't. This time, the sensations were sharp, goading him on faster. He took another step, only a few inches intervening, and let his voice drop huskily. "I seem to remember you also enjoying the opposite, Lieutenant."

Before dinner, if he'd come on this strong, she'd probably have set him on his ass on a kerb, but now, after the sim, with her pulse running high and her blood running hot, and that same inexplicable connection that had brought them together in Fortunas all those months ago, he could tell she was wrapped in the same fervor as he. He set a hand next to her shoulder, on the side of the sim console, tilted his head towards her. Her smile vanished. "I had a worthy opponent," she agreed, and reached up to kiss him.

His body responded with abrupt lack of subtlety, and Lee had one hand in her hair and the other circling her hips before he could think about it. If last time he'd touched her had been remarkable for its dreamy, erotic qualities, then this time was all about need. Her mouth opened under his, her fingers strayed under the edges of his tanks, her hips pressing close to his groin with unashamed urgency. _Oh gods_, he thought, backing her up hard against the cold metal of the console, _this was going to be much, much better than then_.

Then she had both hands on his chest, pushing him back a step, and he felt his knees almost buckle with the impact of that distance. "Kara?"

She was breathing heavily, skin flushed and her lips invitingly swollen. "We need to get out of here," she almost panted, drew in a long breath, glanced up at him and grinned; his expression must have been indicative of the way he felt, like a toddler unreasonably deprived of a lollypop. "Unless, of course, the idea of being interrupted by the base patrol interests you."

Lee opened his mouth, closed it. Opened it again when the image of taking her bent over the console with three jealous soldiers watching had faded - a little - from mind. "Let's go."

It was a short walk, but it took too long; he had to grit his teeth not to pull her into every shadow along the concourse, had taken two steps towards the black shade of a huge old tree before recovering his control. It didn't help that he couldn't quite remember where they were going. Even though they'd parked at her place before they headed to the Sim Suite, he hadn't exactly been noting landmarks.

Plus, she was distracting; every time she looked up at him, they slowed a little, eyes catching and holding, and every time they quickened their pace, he had to remind himself not to reach for her. This was a military base, and though it was quite late, it wasn't deserted. PDA rules didn't stop at sundown, and while he couldn't help but notice the contrast between the first time they'd walked 'home' together and this brisk march, he also couldn't help but feel the similarities. The only rule he was breaking this time was his personal mandate: don't get involved. _A stupid rule_, he decided, _even more pointless than social conventions and the guidebook of casual sex_. Right now, the only 'rule' he was willing to acknowledge was that the street was not the place to act on what he wanted. Everything else could go straight to Hades.

And when she led him up a flight of stairs to her apartment, her door yawned open to receive them and then slammed shut with a kind of inanimate relief, quivering in its frame. He knew how that felt, his body trembling with adrenaline. He grabbed her shoulder before she could move any further down the narrow hall, pulled her back into his body, kissing her throat as his hands slid, almost of their own volition, up under the edges of her tanks.

"Lee," she breathed, when one strayed up high enough to trace the curve of a breast, "oh, Gods..."

He would have wanted a bed. He would have wanted to slide her out of her clothes, map every fraction of her again with eyes and lips and touch, but those things would have to wait, because he couldn't: he slid his hands free, undid her belt and BDU's with two vehement tugs. Kara followed suit with his, their brass clinking together heavily as she struggled with his fly while toeing off her boots. And perhaps he imagined it, but with all his senses running hot, he thought he could smell her as he tugged the military issues down, helped her step out of them: warm, musky salt. She was so close, leaning on his shoulders as she kicked her pants away, and he couldn't resist. He leaned in, hooking a leg aside with his arm, and sought her out with his tongue.

Kara made a wordless noise of desperation, her short fingernails digging into the skin of his arms, and he understood. There'd be time for that later. It was his choice to leave, this time, and he wasn't going anywhere, not until he had to. One more taste, his lips skimming slick, hot flesh, and then he reached up to grab her hips and bring her down to him on the floor.

---

Kara had to admit she'd been on edge since dinner, waiting for this moment; the sim had only sharpened the appetite. And truth to tell, four months of anticipation and barely-acknowledged hope weren't helping either, so when the door slammed shut behind him and she was hauled roughly into his body, her first feelings were essentially relief. Then the anticipation that had danced along her nerve-endings all night centered down suddenly, shockingly intensively, making her lose her breath. Skinning each other out of sweaty uniforms was simple, but when Lee bent to slide off his boots and her skivvies and ended up with his mouth between her legs, she couldn't wait another second.

Neither could he; they tumbled to the floor together, the rough hallway carpet and the pile of BDU's and belts and boots irrelevant as he slid into her. Kara fought to breathe as the sensation nearly broke her: only once before had it ever been so frakking profound to feel that moment of linkage, and that had been Lee, too. But as endless as the instant seemed, it splintered, skittered away the moment he began to move. Belly flexing against belly, his hands clawing into the carpet next to her shoulders, his dog tags swaying over her and brushing against her cheek. _Gods, oh gods oh gods_, she was so lost in it, pushing her hips up off the carpet into his, goading him on.

Lee groaned, paused and stared down at her, the dull illumination of a light on somewhere down the hall throwing his face into sharp relief: his epression wouldn't stay in a smile, it kept breaking up into flashes of emotion and need. He bent to kiss her, and while their bodies pressed tight, she hooked a leg through his and rolled them, pressed _him_ back into the carpet, broke the conjunction of mouths to concentrate on the other kind. The change seemed to press him a little deeper, and she gasped, looked down to see him staring at her torso.

"I've dreamed of this," he said quietly, reached up to brush fingers down the swaying length of her tag chain, pads of their tips stroking against the naked, dewy skin. He kept them going, then, following the line further and further until they stopped at the apex of her thighs, probing; his hips rocked upwards at just the same moment, and Kara couldn't help herself, grinding down against both. She felt as though the launch tube had her in it's grip, the countdown pulsing upwards in time with his hips, her vision greying out until she exploded, falling fowards, her eyes blinded by the sudden fire of the stars.

Lee's face swam into view in her spinning vision, her body still clenching around him as he thrust against her, his eyes flickering shut. "We're not done," he told her, his jaw clenched. "Not by a long shot, Kara."

They rolled again, and again, the walls of the narrow hallway thudding against shoulders, elbows and knees, the carpeting scrubbing like sandpaper at sweaty skin. They were like vipers in flight, she thought, closing her teeth on the cap of his shoulder: speed and power and grace overlaying brute, brutal force. Oh, but they could hurt each other. She was already afraid that there was blood under her fingernails. Twice he stopped, holding himself off her, his jaw rippling in the half-light as he fought not to reach climax yet; both times she snarled in frustration and clawed at him, but he only smiled.

Lee Adama, Kara thought as he bent one of her legs upwards and pinned her open with a locked arm, was not just a worthy opponent, he was her honest-to-gods equal; she might fly better, but this... They strained against each other, both trying to bring him deeper, both desperate to keep him there; Kara felt her body lock around his again and reached up to tangle in his hair, to bring his face around. "Look at me, Lee," she whispered, her throat hoarse with need, "come with me."

Their eyes snapped into conjunction, and she felt a tremor begin under her fingers, in his scalp, "Kara," he choked, his hips stuttering into violent, broken rhythm. "Kara," he said again, stronger, as she felt her body seize, her muscles gripping him in renewed climax. Then he surrendered, her name a near-shout that melted into delight, and she let go, ecstacy spawning new suns behind her eyelids.

However long the wordless, timeless moment of aftermath was, Kara felt no desire to move; not yet. Maybe not ever. He was slumped over her, an elbow supporting the most of his weight, but their joined hips - her body still clenching ever so slightly around his cock - pressing pleasantly, and she could feel his pulse pounding in his temple where it pressed against her neck. His hair was slick under her fingers, so she untangled them, stroked them gently down, heard him 'mmm' with lazy pleasure when she pressed down on the small of his back and up with her bruised hips, and had to smile. "Like that?" she enquired.

Lee propped himself a little higher, pushed back again with his own pelvis, grinding against her. "What do you think?"

She laughed, and he kissed her; slow, broken kisses as they both fought to replenish oxygen. "I think," she said eventually, "that we need a shower."

"Mmm," he agreed, nuzzled his face into her neck; she felt the tip of his tongue come out to taste her sweat. "Shower would be good." But he didn't move, and she felt no inclination to hurry him, not until the knee still hooked around his free arm announced its imminent discomfort, tensing up. He must have felt it, because he immediately slid his arm back, letting her leg relax slowly. His eyes flickered open, concern in them. "You okay?"

Kara didn't have the energy to hit him, not just yet. "Are you?"

Lee chuckled. "Marked up in a few places," he murmured, bent to kiss her again, then slowly backed away, their bodies seperating with a mutual sigh. "But nothing I can't handle."

Shifting herself up onto her elbows, Kara took stock and was inclined to agree. He had teethmarks over his collarbone, but they weren't serious and would fade almost immediately. The marks of nails in his bicep, though - he'd have those a week or so, and his knees and forearms were reddened. She reached up, ran a fingertip over the traces of the bite. "You gave as good as you got." _Probably worse_, she thought privately as they picked themselves up off the floor. Her hips would be bruised the approximate shape of his hands; her knees and her right shoulder were bruised from contact with hard surfaces, and she had her own friction burns. The damn things would sting in a flight suit.

Lee bundled up their clothing, leaving the boots where they lay; all of a sudden he looked a little edgy. "I left my bag in the car," he muttered, almost under his breath, and Kara realised he wanted to stay.

She reached out, tugged the tangle of sweaty garments out of his fingers, dumped them back on the floor. "You can get them in the morning."

His smile cut straight through her to the soul.

-- + --


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** my thanks to all my wonderful reviewers. I'm glad you're enjoying this, your feedback is a great motivation. This is the 2nd last chapter of this act of Contraventions; chapters 1-6 were Act One, and chapter 12, which I should have up within a week, will conclude Act Two. The story will continue in Act Three, but not until the new year. Readers need not worry, though; each act is self-contained so there won't be any longstanding cliffhangers over the holiday period.

I must also give my profound thanks to the lovely Claira, who is _starslikedust_ on LiveJournal, and an amazing writer of BSG and L/K fic, for her assistance and inspiration. Large chunks of the second section, in Kara's voice, are entirely due to her.

Disclaimers: not mine, of course. I do this entirely for love (of feedback, and pilots).

-- + --

Lee reached over in the dimness, moved his hand the few inches intervening and found her hip; neither of them had moved since she slipped - the freshly showered sweet-soap fragrance of her skin already tinged with new sweat - sideways off his body. He wasn't sure he could find the coherency to do more, despite the temptation; right now, still trying to get his breath back, he thought it was even beyond him to actually get _into_ the bed, rather than sprawl across it the way they were.

He could turn his head though, and did: she was face-down, her feet across one side of the bed, one arm dangling on the other, hair a swaying curtain on her cheek and curled dark and damp against the skin of her neck. He thought about grabbing one of the pillows from his other side and tucking it underneath her cheek, but... moving, and all that. "Gods," she muttered into the blankets. "Maybe it's a good thing you're posted off-planet?"

Lee found air enough to chuckle with. "Is that an admission of defeat, lieutenant?"

Her chin snapped up, and she looked at him with an expression just short of challenge. "I'll be on deck again before you will, _sir_." A pointed look at his groin and a half raised eyebrow, and Lee rather thought he'd be at flight status much more quickly than she anticipated. Then she laughed, and he couldn't help but share in it. "But considering we're both supposed to be on deck, for actual flight, in..." Kara squinted at the glowing dial of an alarm clock, "seven and a half hours..."

The pilot in him groaned. "Frak. It's past oh-two-hundred?" Turning to look for himself seemed like a completely unnecessary effort, under the circumstances, but he hauled himself up on an elbow to do so and then ran a hand along her arm. "You'll hate me if you sleep like that, Kara. Come on."

"Might hate you anyway," she muttered, her tone more tired than serious, but they managed to right themselves in the bed, settled back against the flat pillows they were both well used to, the sheet the only thing either of them could bear touching bare skin... except skin. "I'm gonna be limping to the raptor at this rate."

Lee twisted onto his chest, wrapped an arm around her ribs and closed his eyes. "At least you won't be cramped into a Viper like I will."

"I could deal with that, though."

"I'll bet." He was comfortably sleepy, and he knew she was tired, too, but the body under his arm was ... tense. Not hugely so, but given the workout they'd given each other, he couldn't quite wrap his head around a reason. His own limbs felt pleasantly slack and the block of tension he'd had building at the back of his neck - the one that had begun when he was told he'd have to go to _Galactica_ - was gone, and not even thinking about his old man was going to bring it back tonight. But Kara was moving a little, restlessly, and that made Lee's eyes click open.

"Did..." he started, paused when she started at the sound, began again. "Do you want me to take the couch?"

"No!" Kara shifted, lifted a hand to her face and then turned to look at his. "No. Lee... I don't do this, that's all. I don't want you to leave, but I'm not used to it, you know? I'll be fine. Go to sleep."

"When you do," he told her, tightened the arm he had around her slightly. "I don't blame you. None of this has gone ... well, I didn't plan for -"

"Yeah."

Her skin was very pale in the moonlight and her eyes very dark, and tired. "Talk to me, then," he suggested softly. "Back in the sims, you said something about tests when I said that the console had faster responses than a real bird. What did you mean?"

Kara's mouth turned up at the uppermost corner. "Tests show that Mark VII vipers and the sims console have reaction speeds within a milisecond of each other. Too small to notice, even to the best of pilots. The sim might have felt faster, but actually, _you_ were slower."

He instinctively rejected having his reflexes questioned. "I was not!"

She laughed, softly. "It's not a physical thing, flyboy. Relax. But think about what it's like to do the real thing. Think about the lead in, the preparation, the moment when sealing yourself into that cockpit hits you low in the belly and adrenaline starts pumping. You know how that feels."

It was true, he did. Everything from twenty-five minutes before flight contributed to that instant of realisation: getting into the flight suit, the necessary evils of catheters and the welcome friction of the thermal inner layer against space-vulnerable skin. Having your crew spec or assistant LSO check your connections over, check the seals on your boots and gloves. Inspecting your helmet, clearance on the o-vents and the rebreather intake, checking the collar seal. And then the walk, the one that was always a mix of elation and a frisson of fear, no matter how much you loved flying, not matter how many times you'd made that walk before: across the hangar deck, up the ladder, and into the bird. The punch-thrust of launch, and then space.

He felt himself nodding, slowly. "Truth is," Kara went on, "we can make a sim as realistic as anything for actual _flight_. They're working on direct interface now, where you get an input implant that can override your senses: two steps way past insane, in my opinion, but you know the boys in R&D. But the one thing we can't duplicate is how it feels to make that choice, to put yourself in that situation. No sim console in the universe can fool you that you're climbing into a real bird when you're not."

"So I got in the sim and the ship felt faster because I wasn't in the same headspace?"

She nodded, hair brushing the pillow. "That's what the shrinks say. And you're a pilot. You know how to assess your own reflexes."

"I knew it wasn't real, so there wasn't the same... sharpness. You're right."

Lee pondered that while he looked at her, the way her body was curving into the pillows and mattress, and felt an uncomfortable tightness in his throat. He realised, then, why his first time with her, and this second, painfully wonderful night, felt so different. The first time wasn't supposed to be real. He'd gone looking for _anyone_, and it so happened that he found her. But this night, this time he'd gone looking for _Kara_. The thought of what that might mean sent a thrill of something enormous through him; realization of what he actually wanted out of this... _thing_, where exactly it might take him... and how that would affect everything else he wanted to do. The tension between two possible futures suddenly had him in its grip, claws in and tugging.

Kara, a tiny crease between her brows, stared at him and he realised that her sleepiness had fallen away. "Lee?"

And so had his. "Just thinking," he hedged.

Her face, cheekbones highlighted, eyes in shadow, smoothed into something masklike. "About the sims?"

"Kind of," he answered. It was true, as far as that went.

Her face went even more unreadable. "We can make sims that will help good pilots become better ones," she offered, her voice low and scratchy. "But we can't -"

Distracted by the change in her, by the sudden war of possibilities in his head, Lee waited two seconds for her to finish her sentence before he realised she wasn't going to, and why. Potential tomorrows crystalised, fractured and scattered through him, his own voice grating with the pieces. "So you know about that, do you?" He needed to move, tired or not; he rolled, sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her and the sudden, unwelcome reminder. "You know about Zak."

She exhaled, the sound pained. "Yeah, I knew about it. He was almost one of my nuggets - surname's an A, you wind up in Blue squadron for basic flight. But I was in hack the week that Blue mustered in, and they assigned Strut Carruthers, instead of me. I took Green."

"It's not the instructor's fault." His tones were clipped. "He shouldn't have been there."

"Maybe not," Kara agreed. "But it's hard to tell, in Basic - at least, it's hard to tell before we get them into daily sims, pound the ego out of them. And with some people, it's easy to mistake." He felt her weight shift as she stood up; the moon was sinking, and the light that had streamed into the window was shifting, casting up silhouettes, turning her into a conglomeration of shadow and glow when she moved over to stand by the glass. "Some of them have everything you want a pilot to have, you know? The desire, the drive, the knowledge. Your brother did. I subbed for a couple of his theoretical classes, and he could have frakkin' taught that class. But you put him in the sim, and -"

"And he couldn't do it. I know. I've read the files." Lee looked up at her, her face darkened but her body outlined in a halo: female shape made streamlined by light and hard usage. Beautiful. "But everything he was good at, he learned. You can train your mind. But you can't train your body to do things the right way and do it every time, if that's just not the way yours works."

"Yeah."

It grated, still. Lee had had to cram that theory stuff, still had to, at times. Avionics and physics were not his forte, though practise and dedication had given him a good understanding. Science he had learned to love, but he'd never surpass those R&D fellows who could design a way to completely fool your brain. On the other hand, he was a good soldier - if the term wasn't one he liked to have applied - with a mind that understood tactics and methods, with a grasp of logistics and organization that was intuitive. And he'd had the one thing his brother hadn't: the synchronicity of body and mind, thought to action to motion without pause, that made a good pilot a great one. And it was a gift he'd never learned to value until the day he'd been allowed to fly a real Viper.

That was the one stumbling-block in his life's ambition. Though he had everything planned, right down to drafts of his letter of resignation from the Colonial Fleet, he had always stumbled over the idea of never flying Vipers again. He could hear his own words as he tossed his captain's bars on his father's desk, could almost taste the satisfaction of throwing his achievements in the old man's face, but he had never been able to imagine resigning his wings. It was something he knew would have to happen, like death at some point in the future, distant and nebulous, and he tried not to think about that.

And the woman in front of him? another stumbling block, one now tied inorexably to the fleet and Zak and the potential for something he hadn't anticipated, a future that didn't fit with the one he had planned. He sat there, balancing Zak and his planned reckoning and the freedom of walking away against a future of flying, flying with Kara, _being with Kara_, and it froze him, indecision locking his limbs and anger his father, at Zak, even Kara, grinding his teeth. He didn't realise Kara'd moved until he felt the bed shift again, felt her hands slide over his shoulders from behind, felt her lips press against the nape of his neck.

"Don't think about it," she whispered, her words stirring the short, crisp hairs and sending shivers cascading down his skin, her hands following after. "We don't have time to think, Apollo."

His callsign on her lips held no double meanings. It was just who he was, with her. Oblivion beckoned; Lee turned and buried himself in it, pressing his face between her high, round breasts. "Starbuck," he breathed, and let her pull him down to the bed, let the pilot instinct take over.

The rest could wait.

---

Kara opened her eyes to the strange sensation of company in her bed, blinked reluctantly in the bright morning light which promised yet another humid Spartan day. Her limbs protested stretching, but she ignored the tug of tired thigh muscles and the dull lazy ache of the internal variety, turned her body a little to look at Lee Adama's sleeping face. Unguarded and untroubled, he looked younger, the handsome features carrying an almost angelic caste; when his eyes were opened, he looked much more like a predator, like the bird of prey he was at a viper's controls. In sleep, that dangerous slant of his eyebrows relaxed; the lines of his jaw softer as the muscles lay slack; he could look even younger smiling.

He hadn't quite been smiling when he'd fallen asleep at long last, a few hours before, but at least the sharp, predator's expression had lapsed. She'd worked hard for that moment, coaxed his anger into a more pleasant channel, then teased him, tormented him into a release that expended both temper and desire. She'd be paying for it, Kara acknowledged: there were probably bruises on bruises on hips and thighs, and between them, but it was the least she could do for having been such an idiot and referring to his brother.

Lee was still deeply asleep, his hand still wound through her hair in unconcious possession. Moving away would wake him, but as she glanced past him at the accusing display on her alarm clock, she realised that it wouldn't matter. Lack of sleep wouldn't be remedied by dozing off again if they had to sprint through their pre-flights to make launch on schedule, but an unhurried shower, coffee and a good breakfast could do a lot to lessen the impact of fatigue. Kara turned her head further, let her lips brush against the wrist which had pillowed her cheek ever since he'd rolled off her, exhausted, in the night. She arched against him, stretched her limbs - sore thighs and all - and let her movements wake him.

Lee came alert all of a sudden, his blue eyes open and instantly aware, the corner of his mouth turning up in a slight grin, but then he groaned. "Gods, you're insane. How can you possibly be awake?"

"Tired, flyboy?" she taunted, sitting up and looking down at him, the sheet held up appropriately with her free hand. "And here I thought you were inexhaustible."

"Must have me mistaken for somebody else," Lee grumbled, and sighed. "Are we late?"

"No. Two hours, Captain. If I let you go back to sleep, you'll feel ten times worse when the LSO comes to kick you out of my bunk." The thought made her wince. Kara couldn't stand Captain Mossman, who was a sanctimonious holier-than-though nightmare, who, in the squadron's considered opinion, had probably never had sex in her entire, miserable, so-rulebound-you-probably-_could_-bounce-cubits-on-her-bed, regulation adherent life. The idea of the long-faced LSO and her regulation two marine escort busting down Kara's door in order to roust her out, and finding _Captain Adama_ in her bed was mildly entertaining for the woman's predictable reaction, but the offended modesty of Mossman's aftermath certainly wouldn't be.

Lee shrugged, and that made him groan; Kara realised she wasn't the only one hurting. "Wouldn't be so bad. It's not like we're breaking regs, Lieutenant."

"Not yet, we're not. But if we stay in bed, we will be," she promised, and he grinned again. "Come on, sir; go get a hot shower. I'll grab you a fresh towel."

He mumbled what she could do with the towel, then sighed and sat up. For a moment, they looked at each other, slight awkwardness of this unfamiliar territory making Kara wish she'd had enough sense to get a little more distance between them. His eyes went dark, and suddenly, 'inexhaustible' seemed like it might not have been far off the mark as a descriptor of Lee Adama. Kara swallowed. "Hi," she whispered.

"Hi," he agreed, leaned in, let a hand come up again to twine in the hair that brushed her neck. Their faces tilted together, foreheads touching. "I'd kiss you," he said, grinning, "but I forgot to clean my teeth last night. Got... sidetracked."

Kara laughed, not entirely ungrateful for his hygiene priorities. "And it's happening again," she told him. "Go on, shower. There's a new toothbrush in the top drawer." Watching him roll away and get up, watching him stretch and move across the room, gave her ample time to ogle his muscled physique; when he glanced over a shoulder at her and caught her staring, she smiled wide, unashamed. She didn't move until she heard the squeal of reluctant plumbing, finally hauling her protesting body out of the bed to inspect the damage: yep, she had bruises, clear fingermarks on her flanks, a wine-coloured hickey at the top of an aching inner thigh, and what looked like stubble rash to go with the carpet burns from earlier in the evening. It was going to be a very long flight.

Getting moving and staying moving helped; she shrugged yesterday's tanks and a pair of shorts over her battle scars, ducked out into the growing heat of day to grab Lee's duffel from the car, then put it and a clean towel inside the bathroom door. Her refrigerator yielded up some eggs and half a dozen frozen bacon rashers, and there were three kinds of instant coffee on the shelf. By the time Lee came out of the bathroom - wearing the towel rather than his flight suit, she noted with mixed emotions - she had the bacon thawed and the frypan heating and was halfway through her first mug of Tauren Roast.

"Any more of that?" he looked at the coffee longingly, propped himself against her narrow kitchen counter.

"Depends. Did you leave me any hot water?" His look was indignant. Kara laughed. "Just made it. Help yourself."

"I will." Lee made a beeline for the coffeepot. "Your turn in the head, lieutenant."

"But -"

"I'll watch the eggs." He took her wrist, tugging her gently away from the stove, and placed a kiss in her tingling palm before shoving her gently towards the door. But when she came back, fresh tanks and a pair of shorts doing temporary duty rather than putting on the too-warm flight suit just yet, he hadn't moved. The pan was smoking and Lee was staring out the kitchen window at a squad of jogging nuggets, their young faces already shining with sweat.

"Frak," she said, shouldered him out of the way and moved the pan off the heat. "You awake?"

"Yeah." The tone of his voice was distracted. "Sorry, I was just --"

"No problem." A flush of guilt added to the warmth of the stove: his brother again? She was frakking stupid to have gone there. It hadn't been intentional, but when she'd noticed his abstraction, she'd let her stupid mouth run away with her. "How'd you like your eggs?" Lee was looking at her, now, she could tell; his itching gaze was on the nape of her neck. Silence stretched, and she turned, egg in one hand, to repeat the question. "How'd you --"

"I'm getting out in seven months," he interrupted, his eyes intent. "I want to know if you'll be here."

Her fingers closed convulsively on the eggshell, and she turned, let the broken contents run through her fingers and into the frying pan. "Scrambled," she muttered, reached for the next. Where the frak did he _think_ she'd be? And why the hell would be be thinking about seven months from now? "Seven months?"

"My term is up then. I've got a lead in on a test job with Promethian Aerospace, here or Caprica; I can choose my post."

Kara's hands suddenly wouldn't move; the plastic eggslice in her fingers seemed to be frozen in place over the pan. She tried for flippancy, twisted her mouth into a grin. "It's always who you know."

"Kara," he shook his head, "I can't be here now. Not yet. But I'll be back, and I want you to be here when I am."

She knew he wasn't just referring to Sparta. "You couldn't be here in the _last_ five months either, Lee."

He swallowed, nodded. "I have reasons. I know it's sudden --"

Sudden? She could laugh. "Sudden like a frakking FTL jump! Gods, Lee... I don't even frakking _know_ you. What do you think this is? We got together and it was great, and we played by the rules. Then you say you'll call me soon, and five months and one night later, you --"

"I know, and I'm sorry. But believe me, I wanted to call you every godsdamned day. I nearly did; three days after we... after, I actually picked up the phone in that hotel room and was dialling when I got a priority blip calling me back to _Orion_. And every day since, it's been haunting me. I stuck your card up in my bunk, for frak's sake. But I didn't call because if I did, I wasn't going to make it to my next leave. If I spoke to you and you wanted to see me, I think I would have gone insane, because I couldn't _be_ here."

Oh.

Kara stared unseeing at the pan in front of her, dizzy with the onslaught of desire and fear and shock; her hands moving mechanically, independent of her mind. Finally she made her mouth work. "I have plenty of leave time," she said, suddenly glad she'd been so recalcitrant about taking it in times past. "Plenty of time to--"

"You can't take leave to a battlestar. And I don't have any time, Kara, I need to keep my mind on the job. But that doesn't mean I am going to walk away from this."

"And what _exactly_ is this?" Her tone was accusing.

"I don't think you need me to tell you that." Lee's voice was low and rough, and he took the spatula out of her grip, forced her to turn and look at him. "What _this_ is, is something I've never had before. Maybe we don't know each other so well yet, but I know when something just works. I know potential when I see it, and so do you, and we do not want to waste it."

She yanked at his grip, but he didn't let go. "How do you know what I want?" It was meant to be a snarl, but between the way her heart was battering at her ribs, a caged bird in panic, and her struggle to free her hands, it came out sounding more like a sob. She struggled harder.

Lee's face was full of confusion and tension; he shook his head, shook her slightly until their gazes clashed. "One question, Kara, and I'll let go." He waited, and when she nodded, his grip loosened but didn't break. "Do you want to see me again?"

The furious rejection her pride demanded died in her throat, choking her, when she saw the desperation in his eyes. Again, movement without volition: she nodded, her chin jerking, her eyes dropping so she wouldn't have to see his triumph.

Her wrists were freed, but only because his hands had come up to gently frame her throat, thumbs brushing the line of her jaw, fingers resting on racing pulse-points. Lee leaned in slowly, kissed her, mouth incongrously frantic: no triumph, just pure relief. She grabbed on and clung to his body, bare skin under her hands, tasting coffee and toothpaste. When he pulled back, he wasn't smiling, but his eyes were dark and deep. "Then you will."

They stood there, trembling slightly against each other, and then he looked over at the stove. "You burned the eggs."

Kara pulled herself together, went to salvage breakfast. "Frak. It's your fault, you know." She didn't really want to let this, whatever_ this_ was that he just made happen, slide, but it was easier than trying to discuss it.

Lee grinned uncomfortably. "Maybe you're just a lousy cook."

"And you are clearly so much better?" At least the banter felt familiar.

"Hey, everyone has a skill."

Kara shook her head, scraped the unburnt eggs onto a plate and the remnant into the trash to make room for the bacon. Lee put his arms around her waist, leaned his chin on her shoulder, and between the feel of his body against her back and the sound of his breathing in her ear, she couldn't concentrate enough to think about anything else. He was an effective distraction and he kept it up while they ate, twining his fingers through her free hand, twining their calves under the kitchen table. It was a slow, titillating meal, and when their time was almost up, Lee tugged her out of her chair, wrapped his arms around her.

"I'll miss you," he told her quietly, and then he kissed her again. Then he disappeared into the bedroom to dress, and when he came back, he was a pilot. Kara resolutely pushed everything else aside, pushed her protesting limbs into her flight suit, and went to join him in his preparations to fly.

-- + --


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: Happy New Year. Enjoy the conclusion to act2, and thank you for the wonderful reviews. This time, Kara gets the long voice, and while it won't make any shippers glee overmuch, I hope it rounds out the theme of futures well enough for all.

Act 3, which will deal with Kara and Lee in their precarious new life, is being written. I don't know dates on the first chapter yet, but hopefully not too far away. Thank you all and have a wonderful safe holiday season.

---

Chapter 12

-- + --

The headache that pounded in the back of his skull could have been equal parts fatigue and grief and shock, but the clinical part of Lee Adama's mind informed him that it wasn't. The same facility that told him when he was overcorrecting his turns - legacy of dealing with the newer model vipers which were fly-by-wire and sensitive and not this glorious hunk of antique junk - was the part of his brain that also told him that his headache was mostly dehydration, with a little of the glare-blindness that was the result of his earlier experiment in nuclear simulations. He'd been in a flight-suit, or a cockpit, for close to sixteen hours; the water reservoir in the Viper had been intended, like most things in the older models, for short combat flights. Which meant that by the time he'd been hauled into _Colonial_ _Heavy_'s shuttle-bay, it had been empty for almost two hours. And since that first attack, he hadn't had time to do more than make a trip to the head and splash the non-potable wash water on his face.

Strange how easily so many of the realisations that had yet to occur to the new Colonial President had already reached the state of 'standard' in his mind: _don't waste water. Don't waste foodstuffs. Don't waste ammunition._ And most of all, _don't waste time_. The clinical part of his brain that was divided from the emotional realities informed him bluntly that if he didn't get himself together, he wouldn't have a chance to worry about water or ammunition, because the Cylons would be back, and they no longer had planets to run to. He listened to it only insofar as that he accepted ice-water - a paper cup marked with the winged star of _Colonial Interstellar_ - from a flight attendant who just seemed desperate to do something; he drank it down, the chips of ice too small to impede his throat, but leaving cold trails inside him.

His practicality was occasionally useful, but at times like this, he wanted none of it. He wanted to be like the young couple he'd seen in the main passenger compartment, their faces shellshocked and blank, not yet aware enough for tears. Or the older gentleman he'd had to shuffle past in the head, who had been intoning some prayer, crying unashamedly. But he couldn't: couldn't allow himself that much space, not yet. He had lived his entire life in the shadow of duty, and now duty called, and he didn't think there was a single atom of his being that could refuse. Whatever it was he needed to feel, to think, would have to wait.

Unbidden he took another cup of water, felt the tension in his scalp ease and then return; the ship was approaching the end of this slow and dangerous maneuver through the veiling clouds of the frozen planet of Ragnar. Somewhere in the orbital space was a mothballed munitions depot that someone somewhere had probably lost the decommissioning paperwork on. Of the same vintage as the _Galactica_ and her sister ships, the station was a relic of the first Cylon war, and the multiplicities of irony in that thought hit Lee far harder than he could allow his grief, his fury to strike. He'd spent his entire adulthood - in high school, flight school, in war college - learning the ideologies and logistics of interstellar war, because he was so sure that his old man was wrong, a fool, a relic just like Ragnar and his precious ship. Every single thing he'd learned had assured him that he was right, that his father was wrong, that war would never come again.

The fates apparently had twisted senses of humor. In more ways than one.

Surrounded at close range by the plush beige interiors of a business class transport and at a greater distance by ugly, debris-ridden space and an uninhabitable planet, he could feel his practical, cold-blooded self slipping away: in an hour, that part of him would be back and in command, but right at that moment, he was just Lee, too tired to be Apollo with his practised mask of unemotional control. And the other grand jokes the fates had played on him were not going to be kept at bay any longer, the immortals - if they existed - demanding he face them. The end of the worlds, and he's left with the one family member he can't stand, bound to a role and rank he would have gladly given up in a little more than half a year. The hysterical laughter in his ears could have been three cackling crones instead of a half-mad mother of four whose children were back on Aquaria.

Like a sick vid advertisement playing over and over in his head, as though the fact of armageddon wasn't enough: _but wait, there's more!_ He'd found possibilities he'd tried to avoid for years, plunged headlong into them, wrapped himself in the hope thereof: a woman he could really love. And when had he figured it out? The night before the end of the worlds. He could still hear her voice in his head: _don't think, Apollo. We don't have time to think_. But Kara wasn't there to distract him, this time. She was dead, most probably, or soon would be.

He remembered kissing her goodbye - was it really only a day ago? - sneaking a last embrace in the pilots locker back at Sparta's main Hangar, their mumbled goodbyes more to do with 'next time' than the things which cramped in his chest, words and thoughts too new for speech. She'd grinned at him, laid her teeth into his ear, just lightly, but enough to force a reaction even in his tired and turning-pragmatic brain and body. Starbuck had grinned again, sauntered off, hips swaying in the slick rubberised flight suit. And her accompanying comment - "_A little incentive, Captain_" - had echoed in his ears so that the first hour of his Viper flight had been acutely uncomfortable, to the point where he could recall little else of the journey. Then he'd arrived at _Galactica_, and was grateful for her 'incentive'. He could stare down his father's flunkies, even stand up to the old man's reproachful tones by imagining just how he'd get back at her for _that_.

As for Kara? Her flight was a long hop, a short stop at a busy waystation and then a long jump to _Bellerophon_, out in the Leonid quadrant of Colonial space. And _Bellerophon_ was gone, her entire battlegroup dropping out of contact soon after the first shots were fired. If Kara Thrace had been aboard her, she'd have been shoved into a Viper and pressed into combat, and her bird would have shut down with her inside it, the sensors and fly-by-wire system rendered inert. And if by some mad chance she hadn't been on the capital ship, she'd be stranded somewhere in between, wouldn't she? The major waystations had been destroyed, and if she'd been on the planet, back at Sparta early for some reason... well, he hoped she had been, rather than stuck in a dead metal coffin in space. Sparta was glassed, a nuclear crater. It would have been over too soon to know it.

His pragmatism, obviously including a fatalistic streak, could envy that as an end: it was a gentler one than he could foresee for himself. His old man was a soldier, and he could see that warrior nature leading only one way: a blaze of glory, _screw-you_ ending, his ship taking the only kind of retirement that Husker would think fitting, taking all the pilots, all the fleet's remaining personnel with him, including his son. The part of him that was also a soldier - trained, ingrained if not totally by nature - could appreciate that kind of exit, but the pragmatist for once agreed with his human heart: it would be better never to know. It would be better to be spared the realisation, to escape into oblivion without ever needing to be afraid of it first.

The vibration of docking shuddered through his consciousness: _Colonial Heavy_ - no, that was _Colonial One_, now, at least semiofficially, had reached Ragnar, and _Galactica_. It shook him back into some semblance of readiness and out of his morbid regrets; he had work to do. He could shove down thoughts of dying - training helped - and he could cover up thoughts of dead planets with a determination to take as many Cylons with him as possible. He got up, straightened his tanks and fastened the flight-suit again; nodded to the young aide of the new President that he was ready.

It should have been harder to accept things like new Presidents who were glorified teachers and the possibility that he was one of the last Viper pilots humanity had left. But the part of his brain that could stare coldly at his own father was the part that was taking control again. He could be a warrior; he'd been trained for it his whole life. Lee Adama, Captain of the Colonial Fleet, took the first step through the docking lock to humanity's last battlestar and let that knowledge drive back, for a little while, thoughts of his last night on the Colonies, and who he'd spent it with.

---

Anger hit her first the moment she jumped her Raptor-load full of pilots and former-XO's back to Rampling Station from the _Bellerophon_'s patrol sector, only to find the station gone. Debris, a frakking cloud of radioactive debris hanging in space. Some chunks of hull were visible, but no ships.

"Gods," Crashdown stuttered from his ECO seat. "It's been nuked. A busy refuelling and commercial depot with a population of almost two thous-"

"Shut up," Hawk, another pilot formerly of _Bellerophon_'s squadrons, snarled. "Do your job, rook."

Starbuck had to grit her teeth at that; Hawk was a fine stick, but a thoroughly ugly person when hungover, or scared, and jsut now he was both. "Cool it. Crash, get me an open frequency to any ships in the area, see if we have any survivors, and find out what's squawking on the fleet lines. Major?" She looked over her shoulder where Rollins was sitting in the bench seat, his flight suit a little stretched over his slightly slackening midriff but his face as grim as ever.

Her old CAG didn't answer, so she slammed a hand down on the all-stop, sending the Raptor's maneuvering thrusters into action and bringing her bird to a relative halt in space, and turned. "Rocky?"

He stared out the port quarter-canopy, the little segment of plexiglass that gave the pilot some peripheral vision, and his mouth went slack. The word, when it came, was a gutteral sound. "Cylons."

"What?!" Crash yelped, his youth and lack of confidence - the two things that made him acceptable as a co-pilot for Starbuck, who hated back-seat drivers - suddenly a handicap. Kara wrenched her flight harness free and darted across the cabin to his screens, seeing for herself. Nothing out there, nothing moving. She wrapped strong fingers around Crashdown's shoulder, fingers digging even through the flight-suit. The ECO flinched, then turned to look at her; whatever expression she wore must have frightened him more than the thought of Cylon attack, and he nodded. "Channels open. The military frequency is ... hectic. Nothing on local hailing, sir. Give me a minute to sort out what's happening."

"Good." Kara turned back to Hawk, who was studying the pilot's scanners from the jump seat as though he might find something she hadn't, then shrugged him off. The two other passengers, both pilots she'd picked up here at Rampling on the trip out, were wide-eyed and silent, knowing better than to interfere with the way she ran her bird. She swivelled on a heel and bent to look at Rocky, who seemed frozen in his seat except the flexing fingers of his left hand. The motion bothered her, but his gaze drew hers, out again into the field of debris nearby, and that's when she saw it.

Cylon ships in simulators didn't look anything like _this_, but the blackened husk of this broken raider had some familiarities: the narrow viewport, the curving sweep of wing, the ... cockpit (though it seemed hardly likely to contain even one of the bulky armored machines, let alone the three pilots of earlier models) with its profile like a centurion's helm. And though it was dead - one wing gone, the other scored and pitted, the back of the fusillage twisted and melted - it still looked lethal. "Cylons," she agreed. The thought made her angry, her fists balling up in the suit gloves, her fingers itching for missiles, for a Viper with which to pulverise anything that remained of the enemy craft.

"Rampling wasn't armed," Hawk said quietly. "What killed that... _thing_?"

"I'd say their tac-nuke hit the tylium reservoir," Kara hit a few keys on one of the comm screens, bringing up reference pics of the station. "It was double-shielded, and would have survived a hit anywhere else on the station. My guess is that they wanted to burn the refuelling capacity, so they aimed direct for the tank... and just didn't get out of the way fast enough."

Crash's fingers skittered across keys - one of the few things that she held slight and unacknowledged awe of: that someone could type, that fast and that well, in suit gloves - and then stopped dead, hovering over the data input as though frozen. "Gods," he said again, and the horror in his tone drew eyes from all five of the others in the ship. His mouth gaped, and Kara reached past him, triggered the audio output on his comms.

"_This is Commander Adama. Am taking control of the fleet; our planets have been subjected to nuclear attack_..."

They listened, of course. What else could they do? Crash regained mobility and brought up commsat pictures from Picon and Virgon, newscast pics from Caprica City: nuclear attack, indeed. The Nereus Coast, the long sweep of southern Picon beach where Sparta City nestled like an eagle's eye in the crook of a sheltering headland, was invisible now, the ugly plumes of mushroom clouds obscuring the entire area from the satellite's cameras. And Caprica City too, had been directly attacked, the last few images of newscast showing everything up until the moment of actinic flash that broke the communications link. A soldier on his knees before the Colonial Congress building, the tower of smoke already rising behind it. All the while, Adama's voice tolled, a grim and gritty bell, issuing orders. Kara felt the anger in his voice, an echo of her own.

Major Rollins made a sound that was like choking, and Kara dragged her eyes away from the screen to look at him. His face was flushed, and that clenching left hand was clawing at the fastenings of his too-tight suit. "Frak, Rocky - not now!" she cursed at him, already knowing it was too late. The illness that had taken him out of a cockpit a few years earlier had weakened his heart, and the horror of what was unfolding on Crash's screens was stopping it. "Lacey, Jepson, get your asses up here and help me. Hawk, the med kit."

Training kicked in for the other pilots; basic first aid and emergency care were standard for all fleet members, and while Lace and Jester were starting treatment, Starbuck gripped her old CAG's hand tight enough to hurt. She felt impotent, and that made her angrier still. "Frak you, Rocky, you don't get to die now. We're going to frakking need you." The older man didn't seem to hear her, and over the frantic mutters of Jester, who was checking his pulse, Kara heard Crash yelp again. "Incoming!"

Starbuck didn't hesitate, sliding into her seat before Hawk could think of doing it for her: this she could do. "Identify," she snarled, "and get your helmets on, people. And a mask on Rocky."

"Whatever it is, the computers don't recognise it." Crash answered. "And it's frakking fast."

Kara caught the vector from her own screens without the heads-up; fast, and not hiding. And then she turned her eyes automatically out into space and caught a glimpse of the craft heading directly towards her through the clouds of debris, and she knew what it was. One just like it was floating in pieces off her port bow. "Cylon," she said calmly. "We're not armed, people, but I'm not going to sit here and wait for a missile up my ass, so hang the frak on. And Crash? Shut down receivers, all of them."

"What?!"

"That's an order, lieutenant."

"Sir."

Passive and active _dradis_ flickered on her screen and went out and the comms went silent; Kara hit the cabin lights, darkening the interior except for the glow of the medkit's emergency light. Kara sensed Hawk at her elbow. "Strap in and be eyes for me, Hawkins."

"Yes, sir."

That was a first. Hawk was a junior lieutenant, but he had always ignored the fact that Starbuck outranked him; even as she realised that he'd made the switch from peacetime to war, she realised that her own switch had happened before, the moment they'd first jumped in to the part of space that had been home to thousands of military and commercial personnel and found it a graveyard. And that made her angry, too: decisions being made for her always did. She let it simmer. "Crash, without turning on the link that hooks up our nav computers to the Fleet navsats, you need to plot us a jump to Ragnar."

"Sir." Crash didn't argue either, which meant that despite his shellshock, the rookie ECO had understood the information contained in Adama's message: don't trust the defense network. Kara had never trusted it anyway, preferring to hand-check the co-ordinates before she executed jumps because computers screwed up sometimes and she didn't want to be a witness to one of them. The pale glow of the greenscreen nav book didn't light much of the cabin either, but Kara bit her lip, hoping that the two coloured glows inside her bird weren't enough to give them away. Dark and floating dead, they might pass for another piece of debris, but -

"Frak, frak," Lacey called softly from the floor of the cabin. "Starbuck, Rocky's breathing better, but his heart's working godsdamned hard. He needs a doctor RFN."

"Get him and yourselves into harnesses, Lace. Crash, how're those co-ordinates coming?"

"I need another minute."

"Frak another minute," Hawk growled. "That ... thing is still prowling out there."

"I'd rather another minute than we jump into a frakking comet, Hawkins. Everyone secure?"

"Almost," Jester returned, his voice quavery. "You're going to need to be engines hot for fourteen seconds before you can use the jump drive, Starbuck. You can't jump a Raptor cold start."

"Watch me," Kara spat. "I haven't even got countermeasures on this glorified bus."

"Come on, Starbuck," Rollins wheezed, "weren't you the hot jockey, once upon a time?"

"Shut it, Rocky," she answered, but turned to smile, a twist of her mouth that felt more like a snarl. "Save your breath. If I have to dance with this sonofabitch, I will, but I'd rather get you to Ragnar and the _Galactica_ without worrying that bum ticker of yours."

Rocky grinned back, his lips bluish even through the oxygen mask. "Frak my ticker, Kara. Keep this bird alive."

Anger was bubbling, and she wanted to tell her old friend what the hells he could do with his nobility, that she wasn't going to lose anyone today, but it was moot: she wasn't going to die today, either. Not just yet. Not until she was in the kind of ship she belonged in, taking the metal-minded bastards along with her.

"Numbers up," Crash announced, his fingers rattling across keys again; Kara checked the co-ordinates against the nav book - the small, titanium-leaved booklet with the text engraved, made to be impervious to fires, even in space - that rested in it's own pouch beside the pilot's chair.

She thought a frantic prayer to Hermes as she entered them into her console, her furiously working mind focused on the job, and her soul offering up almost unconciously the simple _Prayer of Travellers_ that any child could remember. She let out a breath, drew it back in hard, noted that the Cylon was circling the other side of the wreckage now, the bulk of the debris between them. "Here we go."

The ship came alive the instant her hand hit the rocker-switch, and Crash swore hard. "Frakking jump drives not up, Starbuck, and that thing's coming back!"

"How long?" she asked, tersely.

"Drives or until he's in range?"

"The frakking drives, Crashdown! The rest I can figure myself."

"Eight seconds."

Kara saw the enemy ship arrowing towards her, dodging and weaving through the pieces of Rampling's hull and the remnants of craft that had been docked at it, and kicked her bird into motion, treating the clumsier Raptor to maneuvers more appropriate to the more agile fighter-craft. Twisting out of line of sight behind yet more wreckage, she saw the Cylon dart past into clearer space.

"Six seconds." Crash said.

Ignoring the small sounds of minor debris clinking against the hull, Starbuck dove her ship into the main mass of twisted metal, the warped and skeletal superstructure of the space station, and kept moving. Her _dradis_ told her the Cylon was following, but - computer-like - without the pace and assurance. "Just like the frakking sims," she muttered.

"Three."

Dodging between the eerily riblike spars of Rampling's main habitat - the bulblike midsection where most of her inhabitants had dwelled - she heard Lacey make a gutteral sound, like gagging, and Hawk put a hand up against the plexiglass. Whatever they were seeing, she ignored it. She didn't have time to think about it, not if she was going to save their lives.

"Two."

The Cylon was on her tail. Starbuck bit her lip and tilted the Raptor sideways, diving directly into the twisted remnants of what had probably been a busy shuttle bay; large sections of the hull were still intact, and if she could just put them between her ship and the Cylons -

"One."

The maneuver took the Raptor through gees it had not been designed to tolerate; the engines sputtered, but held, and behind her, she heard a hoarse cry - Rocky - and then a crash, the medkit sliding against the wall. But it worked, perhaps a second's grace earned as the wall of metal shielded them from view.

"Now!" Crash shouted, and she looked at the maze of debris before them and shut her eyes as her hand came down on the jump switch. Time stretched and warped and reformed and there they were, above the cloudy passage to Ragnar Anchorage; and they weren't alone. Ships - dozens of them: small civillian craft, for the most part, one or two Raptors blazoned with the insignia of BattleGroup 75. Kara heard Crash open his comms again, but she wasn't thinking about that.

75. That was _Galactica_. Adama's command.

Lee.

He might still be alive, she thought suddenly, might ... maybe. And maybe not. She thought of him flying home, hoping to catch her, maybe, when he stopped to refuel at Sparta. Her anger boiled over at last, scorching a gaping hole in her ability to deal with the military bullshit; she heard Lacey's soft admonitions and realised she had other things to think about, too. Starbuck thumbed her helmet-mic and cut through Crash's protocol-adherent contact with _Galactica_'s sentries. "This is Lt Thrace aboard Raptor 395, get me clearance to take the gate RFN; I have a medical emergency aboard, and I'm not going to let Major Rollins die so you can play traffic control. Over."

The other Raptor's ECO spluttered and Crash tossed her a reproachful glance but she ignored both, taking her ship into the breach in Ragnar's cloudy mantle, flying by touch and timing rather than using the slower nav-point method of the ships already in the tunnel. Ducking around them, she pushed the Raptor faster and faster, escaping into the relatively clear orbital space almost before she knew it. _Galactica_ came into view too quickly for her to note more than the scars on the old ship's hull plating, and when Crash got her clearance to land in the Battlestar's port pod, it came only a few seconds before she would have interrupted the landing pattern anyway and probably earned herself problems with yet another LSO.

Everything happened too quickly after that, the anger dissipating into helplessness when a small med-team started wheeling Rocky out of the hangar-deck. The rest of the passengers clustered behind her in a knot of uncertainty, crowding her, so she wheeled, walking in the opposite direction. A burly man whose specialist's coverall had a CPO stripe stopped when she yelled at him. "Which way to the frakking CAG's office, chief?"

"CAG," he answered, his face momentarily confused. "Not sure who the new CAG is, sir, but the office is on Causeway B - take your first left out of the main hangar, it's just past the ready room."

Hawk, Lacey and Jepson were already moving; Crash hovered at her elbow. Kara ignored him, stared at the bigger man whose face had gone distant again, waited until his eyes focused on her once more. "Thanks, chief. I've just landed Raptor 359 - Sparta Base bird, unarmed. I don't think you have time for a post-flight right now, so I'll be back. Crashdown here will handle the paperwork."

The junior eltee started, remembering his job, and darted back towards the Raptor. The CPO's eyes narrowed, and then he nodded and straightened to salute. "Thanks, sir. If the bird's flying okay, the rest can wait. Repairs are priority."

"I'll leave you to it." Starbuck saluted back; it was the least she could do, and the man seemed less distracted as he moved away. She took a deep breath, the familiar odors of tylium exhaust and engine oil grounding her, and turned to walk towards the main doors. Five steps away from the ladder, she heard a female voice: "here you go, Apollo" and stopped dead in her tracks. Turning, all she could see was the retreating back of a small orange-clad crew-spec and a pair of flight-boots protruding from beneath a battered Mark II, followed the boots up the line of leg and flank to a familiar profile. And she forgot.

Forgot Rocky, on his way to sickbay, his body giving out. Forgot armageddon and the things she'd tried to ignore in the belly of Rampling Station. Forgot how uneasy the whole conversation they'd had - it felt like a year ago - in her cramped little kitchen had made her. Was just plain happy, gods forgive her, that there was someone in this insane situation who might be glad to see her.

He had grease on his cheek. The marks of her nails were clearly visible on his bicep, exposed when he'd tied his flight-suit sleeves about his waist.

Kara Thrace stopped when her toes were a few inches from his, and looked down at Lee Adama, smiling. "Hey."

---

Afterword:

"I hear you're the new CAG now?"

"So they tell me."

"How are they going to swing that? This is your old man's ship."

"Probably the same way the old man explains everything else: sometimes you have to roll the hard six."

"Huh?"

Lee propped himself on an elbow, looking down at her. She had the smoldering butt of a cigar in one hand, the other was resting on her belly, fingertips just inching below the waistband of her shorts, palm flat on the bare belly. Over the edge of the khaki sportsbra, he could make out the red mark he'd left on one breast the last time they shared a bed. He'd much rather find something else to do than talk, but he didn't think either of them had the energy for it, not just yet. She'd only just managed to get the stupid bra back _on_. "It's something he always used to say when he made a decision that wasn't going to please everyone."

"Roll the hard six?"

"Yeah. Take a chance when you have no choice."

"Huh. Not much of a risk though, if you ask me."

He grinned. "No?"

"Nope. A risk? That'd be making _me_ CAG."

Lee tensed. "He should have. I might be a captain, but I haven't got any more command experience than you, and I'm... his son."

"Don't even go there, Apollo. It's the last thing I'd want. I'm not a big enough dipstick for the job."

Lee let one of his eyebrows lift, raked his gaze over the rest of her, the debauchery of her posture, legs mostly bare and splayed, the way her lips closed around the cigar. "Big dipstick's a prerequisite?"

Kara cackled, pointed the smoking end of her stogie at him. "Don't let it go to your head, flyboy. It's how you use it that counts."

Laughter welled up in him, gladness and somehow joy, despite everything. Three hours ago, she'd saved his life when his Viper had stalled in combat - not that he'd felt very safe during the process, but he wasn't going to complain - and two hours ago they'd fled the chaotic hangar-deck, pleading exhaustion. The empty officer's locker was crammed full of gear that belonged to dead pilots, and he'd stopped, wrapped his arms around her, before she could lead him to one of the bunks.

"I thought you were dead," he'd said, wonderingly, because she was there and alive, and so was he. She just hugged him back, so he got a little distance and looked her in the eyes. "It's good to be wrong."

Now, passing the cigar between them and trading kisses, Lee couldn't be bothered sparing a thought for how many rules were being broken. He was the son of the Commander, and the CAG. Kara was a pilot in his command, and in his bed, and he didn't care about the frakking regulations. It was the end of the world, and there weren't any futures to plan for anymore. The only thing that mattered, right now, was Kara, right there, close enough to touch.

Everything else could wait.

---

Fin.


End file.
